2023/10/18: Continued Adventures in Space Part 8 Report
General Summary
Buzz, Aetheril, Johann, Kal'vus, Union, Sith, Zaran
Most of the party got to spend the night at an inn in Castle Fallingstar. They get to enjoy a goblin doing physical comedy, including self-flagellation with a fish. Sith and Zaran, meanwhile, found themselves teleported back to Sith's tower. Sith was alerted by his security system (Eltana) that a greater goddess of elemental Creation had intruded into the tower, and Adrienne was confronting her in the kitchen. By the time Sith got there, Adrienne had calmed the goddess, Ara, with a combination of headpats, comforting words, and possible offers of cookies.
Ara appears as a short, innocent-looking girl. She is one of the most impressionable, innocent beings Sith has ever run across. She is also ridiculously powerful. Though for some reason she has lost all of her followers thanks to people taking advantage of her. Ara was getting back on her feet, and then some others convinced her that she was the only one powerful enough to save Adrienne from the evil Sith.
It turned out that Ao was probably the one responsible for pulling Sith and Zaran back to the tower. Ara, meanwhile, had gotten into the tower just by asking GHCTTTVORATWCAOTU nicely. The only thing Sith has to fear is polite home invaders.
Zaran communed with Ao to double-check what's going on and whether they should go back. Ao responded with "Castle Fallingstar", then informed him that his question was "Where should we go next". He and Sith waited to get cookies, then teleported to their next stop.
Zelcier is a godslayer android. Johann was interviewing her when Sith and Zaran came in. She was made from the collected juice of a dozen gods of murder, death, treachery, etc. This formed the basis of her personality, but she's also got free will, so she's able to resist it. It also helps that she's depowered, so a lot of the people around the bar could take her. She's grateful to the adventurers who prevented her from getting her free will and personality overwritten with Necrosa.
Buzz, meanwhile, was still talking to Chatopé. He got some information about an evil technomancer named Blink who he's had encounters with before. Blink is a big problem who's currently far away. He's taking resources, kidnapping people, and otherwise building up. He'll need to be dealt with sooner rather than later.
Lillith dipped out of the party. Her skills weren't needed, and she had a lot of other stuff going on. She went back to helping Eldritch work through intel reports and learning how to govern. Aetheril showed up instead to fill the specialist slot, called by Orb. Buzz filled Ril in on the situation.
Orb and half a dozen True Order members were waiting for the party when they came down the next morning.
Akia: dark-skinned tall athletic girl in spiky black armor. She's ridiculously hard to injure.
Torenon's advice: Mine the elementals to reforge reality in the area. He has instructions. Part 2a includes blood magic. He says they can skip that, but it'll be less effective. Orb managed to convince him not to include ritual sacrifice.
1. subdue elementals
2. bind them to some elemental artifacts
3. sacrifice the items in the ritual The party visited the local armor/weaponsmiths to look for expendable element-aligned magic items. One of the more entertaining items the smiths had on hand was a chain skirt, which Johann identified as popular in the Jerritorian gladiatorial arenas. Sith bought an "arrow of sprinkling". If you shoot it at something, the arrow disappears and then it sprinkles water over the area around the target. May be useful with bless to make holy water. Or for pranks. Orb sent the party back to the USS Manticore. They appeared on the transporter pads. The party could hear people moving around in one of the cargo bays.200-foot-long zombie dragon. Out by the entrance to the bay. It has armor plates bolted to parts of its anatomy. It has a saddle.
On the saddle is a very heavily armored black void. Quivering dark erasure in reality. Negative spotlight eyes. Makes darkness encroach on anything it's looking at. Armor looks pretty normal in physical. Oversized, very impressive bronze and gold mace, with a head looking like a bunch of axe heads stuck together.
Off-brand harlequin, female jester type person. Off-white and black. Lots of bags, lots of dagger/spike things.
9-ft-tall skeleton. Wooden mask covering face. Mask is garishly painted in primitive style, looks like scary skull face. Skeleton is bent and curved in unnatural fashion. Has double-ended polearm in one hand. Large crescent blades facing opposite directions. A bit larger than he is.
If Kingpin was made into a lich. Big chonky skeleton in a big robe. Lots of bling. Almost as tall as the big skeleton, makes up for less height with mass. Wizard staff with layers of bling.
Two larger-than-human-sized death knights. Lots of armor, big two-handed swords. Swords are glowing faint green.
The group looked like they'd trashed Buzz's small spelljammer looking for the party. They seemed frustrated. Naturally, when both sides' eyes locked combat was the only result.
Buzz opened with ray of salvation on the zombie dragon. The lich king of space bounced it back at double strength. It didn't do anything to Buzz, but it was certainly a good thing to know about. Kal'vus noticed that it seemed to be a function of the lich's mace, which may also have ranged functions given how far away the ray was when it got parried. Kal'vus started tossing ranged attacks at him, and those didn't get deflected. Two did get parried, though.
Various temporal shenanigans went off in quick succession. Sith's attempt at a time stop kicked him and Ril into a bubble of divergent time, and then Ril managed to hit time itself with a reincarnate rather than hitting the skeleton with the polearm. Union did multiple time acceleration effects and found himself in a different divergent timeline, though he and the other two got to stare at each other in confusion as they passed.
It was also revealed that the jester in the opposing group is the friendly jester goddess from before. This hostile team was sent by the evil gods who cursed Zeltheon and are trying to get him back. She seemed to be along for the ride just to mess with them and was pretending to be undead.
Akia proved to be both nigh-invulnerable and able to choose to be immovable, which she used to great effect by grappling the polearm skeleton, pinning him to the floor, and then refusing to move.
With the polearm skeleton immobilized and the jester a quiet turncoat, momentum shifted in the hero party's favor, and they were able to beat the death knights to pieces and unstick the Kingpin lich from time. The wraith lord got reincarnated by Ril and made a retreat on his zombie dragon not long after. Buzz hit them with a phoenix gate-empowered light grenade on their way out, which returned the dragon to life and made Union, Johann, and Kal'vus feel very zen. The dragon, which appeared to be a purple dragon, did not turn on its rider as they left. They apparently had a spelljamming helm, because they fled into the darkness surprisingly quickly. With that, the fight was over, and the only "member" of the opposing team still standing was the jester.
2. bind them to some elemental artifacts
3. sacrifice the items in the ritual The party visited the local armor/weaponsmiths to look for expendable element-aligned magic items. One of the more entertaining items the smiths had on hand was a chain skirt, which Johann identified as popular in the Jerritorian gladiatorial arenas. Sith bought an "arrow of sprinkling". If you shoot it at something, the arrow disappears and then it sprinkles water over the area around the target. May be useful with bless to make holy water. Or for pranks. Orb sent the party back to the USS Manticore. They appeared on the transporter pads. The party could hear people moving around in one of the cargo bays.
Rewards Granted
3 xp
Character(s) interacted with
Jay-Aliel, Chatopé, Zeltheon, Memnon, Orb, Adrienne, Ara, Ao, Zelcier, Eldritch Sol Leithien, Akia, Temperance, GHCTTTVOTWCAOTU
Notes
Castle Fallingstar: Large imposing gothic castle with an invisible bridge leading up to it. There's a little town outside it. Lots of elves, some goblins. Goblins dress well, have New Yorker/New Jersey accents. Bridge is a little awkward, since it's an arched bridge and it's hard to judge the arch. Other features, inside: tattoo parlor, weapons and armory, big multi-segmented dragon fountain. The usual bartender at the Rook is a dwarven samurai. He used to be a player character. He has a really nice katana that contains/is made from an angry ice dragon.
Orb avoids Sith. Ba'alzamon was number one on the list of people who were a thorn in the side of the Order of Oblivion back in the day. Sith was two or three.
Godslayer sense of touch is focused on hands, feet, and a couple of other areas, with significantly more limited sensors elsewhere. Sense of touch is similar in perception to what humans describe. Sense of pain also similar, but does not become debilitating: It's more like a report on damage, just delivered through pain feeling.
Chatopé is two feet tall. He's wearing a big wizard hat.
Alvidarians are very tall. The smith at Castle Fallingstar is a short Alvidarian woman from southern Alvidar, which means she's 6'2". She's very muscly. Her shop stocks a lot of arrows. She's Temperance, her coworkers/helpers are Francesca and Sarah.
Kal'vus
Sith
Johann Erstklein
Union
Zaran
Buzz Gizmo
Aetheril
Report Date
18 Oct 2023
Primary Location
Secondary Location
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