2023/09/20: Continued Adventures in Space Part 4 Report
General Summary
Buzz, Lillith, Johann, Kal'vus, Union, Sith, Zaran
The party considered their options for getting to the coordinates. Buzz had two remaining big portals per day, one of them reserved for getting home and one available to jump directly to the coordinates. In an effort to avoid unnecessary shenanigans, the party opted to use the portal.
Buzz opened the portal but there was something wrong. There was a small anomaly swirling around the interior of the portal, apparently eating at it and blocking whatever little point it covered. Buzz and Zaran realized this was some sort of death field or powerful soul-sucking spell acting from the other side. While the party could potentially get the ship or themselves through without hitting that spot, stepping into a death field seemed like a bad idea.
The party considered their options for finding the source of the field. The points of interest in the area were the following:
1) A damaged small stone village church, on a blasted and burnt asteroid
2) A mysterious henge in the middle of an asteroid field
3) A large cave with smoke leaking out and quite a bit of char around the cave
4) A camouflaged stone bunker the size of a city
5) A bunch of wrecked wooden spelljammers/sailing ships (6 piles of lumber with nautical bits amidst the wreckage)
6) A techno-organic tower with glowing lights and tentacles
7) A lone neogi, miles from anywhere, hiding in the middle of nowhere
8) An area patrolled by earthen griffons, drakes, wyverns and gargoyles. A tower/fortress the apparent source The party decided to investigate the cave, the bunker, and then the patrolled fortress, keeping their distance from the wrecked spelljammers. They did survey the wrecks from a distance, though, and they detected a strong magic field buried under one pile of rubble, a magic humanoid form inside another ship, and a small magic item in another. The party decided they really should at least check if the humanoid form is a person who needs rescue, so they left the ship behind and flew over on Zaran. They checked the strong magic field first. It turned out that it was a pile of stasised people, all looking some variant of panicked or surprised. The source of the stasis was unclear. After digging the people out, the party discovered that it wasn't just stasis. The people (twelve, mostly human or elfish, but with one monkey person, and mostly wearing robes) were tinted blue, and were very cold. Some sort of cryogenic stasis? The party packed the people up and stored them away. Next stop was what seemed to be an electrum golem. It was inactive. While excavating, the party felt a chill pass over them briefly, originating from the north. They decided it was time to get going. (Lillith found and grabbed a magical folding chair on their way out.) As they flew off, Kal'vus and Buzz spotted a tiny lime green orb flying from one pile of rubble to another. Kal'vus briefly wanted to succumb to his instincts and fly back to grab the shiny, but the group was far enough away that he'd have to leave the flock to do it, and he knows what happens to people who do that. And besides, something about that orb felt bad. The party headed onward to the cave, carefully bypassing the techno-organic tower. The cave had dense smoke pouring out along the roof of the entrance. Zaran, sniffing the air envelope, determined that the source was a dragon of some kind, but definitely not a standard red or gold dragon. Buzz sent a magical fox messenger in with a polite message, but about two seconds later there was a large gout of smoke and the messenger came sprinting back out, apparently scared off. Buzz was surprised to see that the spell was even capable of that. Still, it seemed the party had woken something up. Most of the party members stepped down onto the asteroid to negotiate. Female dragon, bright orange-yellow, has bits of liquid fire dripping off her form. Fed up with roasting adventuring parties. Known locally as "The Eternal Flamewyrm". Known by her friends as Polera. The Flamewyrm title is more of a job. She guards the cave. Apparently there might be some undead archlich doing stuff in the coordinates. They've been up to things for hundreds of years, but now more stuff is happening, especially now that these elementals are showing up. Anyone going too far into the zone around the coordinates tends to die. Zaran gave Polera light grenade. She said it wouldn't have been been very useful where she used to live, which was apparently inside the sun. Polera is a solar dragon. Polera is the guard of the Pool of Eternal Fire. She recommends that the party turn down any quests to mess with it and never try to get in. Johann told her he'd include the warning in his records. The party bid Polera a fond farewell and left to consider their options. Apparently the mage in the tower with the flying guards is willing to throw armies at people to keep himself from being bothered. The people in the bunker are supposedly "scumbuckets" who Polera wanted nothing to do with. After much debate, Lillith, Sith, and Zeltheon headed for the bunker in hopes of negotiating with the thief types they suspected would be there. They found what initially seemed to be black dragon cultists in stealth-patterned full plate armor. They allowed Lillith and co. to meet "the mistress" as long as she didn't make trouble. Inside the bunker was a multi-tiered city, stretching into the distance. There was a sort of fairy tale castle in the middle surrounded by a moat. Fairly high population mix, mostly humans, the rest mostly humanoid. An odd pallor to the humans and some others, as if they've been drained. Very greyscale fashion among the locals. The city is probably over half the size of Radagast. Some ne'er-do-wells accepted money to direct Lillith to an information source named Thaddeus. All indications were that meeting The Mistress herself would be bad. There was a decided lack of anything religious in the city. At least 40-50% of the nobility in the city was vampiric. The streets seemed incredibly safe, though. Lillith and Sith together paid 220,000 gold for all the information the broker had on the anomaly. They got a number of files and a footlocker containing a very dangerous "living sample" of a creature from that place. It is immortal, requires no air or material, but if exposed to life force it quickly doubles, then redoubles. A book contained a variety of accounts of encounters with the anomaly, some with survivors and some with notes found on remains of those who died inside. Survival of the anomaly seems to depend on mental fortitude and some amount of luck. People seem to start going insane, almost developing alternate personalities, and then sometimes they appear to be different people, even other people in the group. Those least affected are the pure of heart and the innocent, including children. At the center is a too-large-to-be-a-spelljammer metal ship. At the center of that is a giant glowing ruby. Lime green oozes roam the ship, eating the life force of any they encounter and duplicating themselves with the fuel. All sorts of other weird things have gone on in the ship, including alternate dimension shenanigans. All in all, it was a great compilation of horror stories. Johann started putting together a sort of documentary horror story based on all of it in his free time. The box containing the ooze was made of some unknown metal, even stronger and lighter than mithril. Sith took the ooze and any party member who wanted to join him back to his tower for experiments. Very safe experiments. Sith may have made a new pocket dimension just to contain the experiments. The box turned out to be made of tritanium, but not tritanium alone. There were remnants of a soul bound to the case, making it slightly haunted, which was the only way it was able to contain the ooze. The oozes passed freely through all other materials, and scan attempts revealed that the oozes had only one stat, which was a single hit point. The only things that could affect the oozes were magical weapons, particularly those with emotional significance, and a few magical or haunted effects. The oozes, in turn, would permanently drain hit points from any creatures they came into contact with, with it only being possible to restore the hit points if the oozes that stole them were destroyed. Sith used legend lore to try to get more information. He was put in contact with himself. Apparently what he has on the creatures is the most ever collected to date. He also discovered that sometimes when you kill the oozes they randomly pop back into existence. Killing them over and over might work, but there's no guarantee. He collapsed the experiment dimension after multiple rounds of cleaning to make sure.
1) A damaged small stone village church, on a blasted and burnt asteroid
2) A mysterious henge in the middle of an asteroid field
3) A large cave with smoke leaking out and quite a bit of char around the cave
4) A camouflaged stone bunker the size of a city
5) A bunch of wrecked wooden spelljammers/sailing ships (6 piles of lumber with nautical bits amidst the wreckage)
6) A techno-organic tower with glowing lights and tentacles
7) A lone neogi, miles from anywhere, hiding in the middle of nowhere
8) An area patrolled by earthen griffons, drakes, wyverns and gargoyles. A tower/fortress the apparent source The party decided to investigate the cave, the bunker, and then the patrolled fortress, keeping their distance from the wrecked spelljammers. They did survey the wrecks from a distance, though, and they detected a strong magic field buried under one pile of rubble, a magic humanoid form inside another ship, and a small magic item in another. The party decided they really should at least check if the humanoid form is a person who needs rescue, so they left the ship behind and flew over on Zaran. They checked the strong magic field first. It turned out that it was a pile of stasised people, all looking some variant of panicked or surprised. The source of the stasis was unclear. After digging the people out, the party discovered that it wasn't just stasis. The people (twelve, mostly human or elfish, but with one monkey person, and mostly wearing robes) were tinted blue, and were very cold. Some sort of cryogenic stasis? The party packed the people up and stored them away. Next stop was what seemed to be an electrum golem. It was inactive. While excavating, the party felt a chill pass over them briefly, originating from the north. They decided it was time to get going. (Lillith found and grabbed a magical folding chair on their way out.) As they flew off, Kal'vus and Buzz spotted a tiny lime green orb flying from one pile of rubble to another. Kal'vus briefly wanted to succumb to his instincts and fly back to grab the shiny, but the group was far enough away that he'd have to leave the flock to do it, and he knows what happens to people who do that. And besides, something about that orb felt bad. The party headed onward to the cave, carefully bypassing the techno-organic tower. The cave had dense smoke pouring out along the roof of the entrance. Zaran, sniffing the air envelope, determined that the source was a dragon of some kind, but definitely not a standard red or gold dragon. Buzz sent a magical fox messenger in with a polite message, but about two seconds later there was a large gout of smoke and the messenger came sprinting back out, apparently scared off. Buzz was surprised to see that the spell was even capable of that. Still, it seemed the party had woken something up. Most of the party members stepped down onto the asteroid to negotiate. Female dragon, bright orange-yellow, has bits of liquid fire dripping off her form. Fed up with roasting adventuring parties. Known locally as "The Eternal Flamewyrm". Known by her friends as Polera. The Flamewyrm title is more of a job. She guards the cave. Apparently there might be some undead archlich doing stuff in the coordinates. They've been up to things for hundreds of years, but now more stuff is happening, especially now that these elementals are showing up. Anyone going too far into the zone around the coordinates tends to die. Zaran gave Polera light grenade. She said it wouldn't have been been very useful where she used to live, which was apparently inside the sun. Polera is a solar dragon. Polera is the guard of the Pool of Eternal Fire. She recommends that the party turn down any quests to mess with it and never try to get in. Johann told her he'd include the warning in his records. The party bid Polera a fond farewell and left to consider their options. Apparently the mage in the tower with the flying guards is willing to throw armies at people to keep himself from being bothered. The people in the bunker are supposedly "scumbuckets" who Polera wanted nothing to do with. After much debate, Lillith, Sith, and Zeltheon headed for the bunker in hopes of negotiating with the thief types they suspected would be there. They found what initially seemed to be black dragon cultists in stealth-patterned full plate armor. They allowed Lillith and co. to meet "the mistress" as long as she didn't make trouble. Inside the bunker was a multi-tiered city, stretching into the distance. There was a sort of fairy tale castle in the middle surrounded by a moat. Fairly high population mix, mostly humans, the rest mostly humanoid. An odd pallor to the humans and some others, as if they've been drained. Very greyscale fashion among the locals. The city is probably over half the size of Radagast. Some ne'er-do-wells accepted money to direct Lillith to an information source named Thaddeus. All indications were that meeting The Mistress herself would be bad. There was a decided lack of anything religious in the city. At least 40-50% of the nobility in the city was vampiric. The streets seemed incredibly safe, though. Lillith and Sith together paid 220,000 gold for all the information the broker had on the anomaly. They got a number of files and a footlocker containing a very dangerous "living sample" of a creature from that place. It is immortal, requires no air or material, but if exposed to life force it quickly doubles, then redoubles. A book contained a variety of accounts of encounters with the anomaly, some with survivors and some with notes found on remains of those who died inside. Survival of the anomaly seems to depend on mental fortitude and some amount of luck. People seem to start going insane, almost developing alternate personalities, and then sometimes they appear to be different people, even other people in the group. Those least affected are the pure of heart and the innocent, including children. At the center is a too-large-to-be-a-spelljammer metal ship. At the center of that is a giant glowing ruby. Lime green oozes roam the ship, eating the life force of any they encounter and duplicating themselves with the fuel. All sorts of other weird things have gone on in the ship, including alternate dimension shenanigans. All in all, it was a great compilation of horror stories. Johann started putting together a sort of documentary horror story based on all of it in his free time. The box containing the ooze was made of some unknown metal, even stronger and lighter than mithril. Sith took the ooze and any party member who wanted to join him back to his tower for experiments. Very safe experiments. Sith may have made a new pocket dimension just to contain the experiments. The box turned out to be made of tritanium, but not tritanium alone. There were remnants of a soul bound to the case, making it slightly haunted, which was the only way it was able to contain the ooze. The oozes passed freely through all other materials, and scan attempts revealed that the oozes had only one stat, which was a single hit point. The only things that could affect the oozes were magical weapons, particularly those with emotional significance, and a few magical or haunted effects. The oozes, in turn, would permanently drain hit points from any creatures they came into contact with, with it only being possible to restore the hit points if the oozes that stole them were destroyed. Sith used legend lore to try to get more information. He was put in contact with himself. Apparently what he has on the creatures is the most ever collected to date. He also discovered that sometimes when you kill the oozes they randomly pop back into existence. Killing them over and over might work, but there's no guarantee. He collapsed the experiment dimension after multiple rounds of cleaning to make sure.
Rewards Granted
12 frozen people, electrum golem, folding chair spelljammer helm
3 xp
Notes
Lillith brought Aldebar Doomguide as a diviner last session. He's still around.
Kal'vus
Sith
Johann Erstklein
Union
Zaran
Lillith
Buzz Gizmo
Report Date
20 Sep 2023
Primary Location
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