Friday, February 06, 2009

Revisiting the Soft World

The party decides to return to the hole where Iluvien disappeared from Olemheiden.  They leave Olemcorro in the middle of the night and trek through the forest, encountering one Catamese encampment.  They successfully convince this camp that they are incompetent skirmishers searching the forest and pass on by.  Toward morning, as they near Iluvien's point of departure, a crashing noise alerts them to animals.

Soon they are jumped by a pair of massive dire boars who surround them and strike from either side!  Tiffy and Ellira are badly gored, and Tiffy feels death's cold breath down her neck.  In a pitched battle involving entanglement, a summoned centipede, and Dev's precise arrows, they manage to slow down the boars enough to destroy them.  After everyone is healed again, they slaughter one of the boars, and Maurice the cleric animates one of them into a shambling boar zombie.

The next morning they reach the point where Iluvien disappeared, and Dev is able to recognize it by a cairn he had left there the previous time.  Inside the portal they find another cage, this one newer-looking than the last.  They leave the zombie boar on the other side and explore the cage, finding yet another scratched heron mark on the cage bars.

There is also a locked door.  Dev proceeds to pick the lock, getting blasted by a trap in the process.  This trap is a wave of blue light that engulfs him, but he feels no pain and it quickly dissipates.  It is at this point that the party first hears a mysterious, loud sound from very far away.  Becoming concerned, Maurice casts an augury spell to ask the question, "Should we leave the cage through the door?" and hears his god telling him emphatically yes.  Another quick augury and Ellira's god suggests that yes, they should climb up the cage's chain.

A quick scramble out of the cage, and then the sound gets louder and they look over to see another rusty cage falling through space, one even more massive than the one they are in.  It's going to hit them.  Thinking fast, Tiffy covers the party in web, binding them fast to the chain, just seconds before the falling cage smashes into bits against theirs, sending them rocketing through space.  When it settles down again, they find that they are safe, although the zombie boar, not completely outside of the portal, lost a leg in the concussion.

The danger clear, the party carefully climbs the chain through the hazy green world.  At the top of it they find a strange platform of smoky glass, topped by another one, upside-down.  The session ended here.

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