Chapter 06:

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Session Number: 150
Date: Sunday 21 October 2012
Venue: Densial's
PCs & Players:

Arrian Rog2/Clr10 (Fergus) (kills: none)
Calico Drd12 (Yeran) (kills: none)
Lionel Rgr6/Wiz1/ArcA5 (Ash) (kills: none)
Rowaine Pal12 (Craig) (kills: none)
Troll Wiz12 (Densial) (kills: none)

XP Awarded: TBA

clarification: the wearer of the ring says the activation phrase, and the holder of the staff is teleported.

thought: find spot where alonso disappeared, presumably there would be a ring there? maybe another object also, such as a staff?

staff has not been absent for a while. leave, following the tracks.

let pope know they are going. pop I can tell you what alo did on this island because I was with him: he went all the way to the south and looked out towards the south for about 10-15 minutes. looked like he was searching for something. then he walked back north to the bridge, crossed and headed south. arr is the sea area in the antimagic field? pope I don't know. ro do you fish? pope I don't but a few of us do. ro may we speak to them? pope you may. they are out there now, fishing with long lines off the shore. go there. 4 people fishing. tr introduces himself. fm haven't seen you before. tr we're new. ro are the fish biting? fm yep. tr is the antimagic thing out there as well? fm yep. it starts a little way out into the water. the boundary seems to be a perfect circle around our town. we have travelled out there on boats. you can't go out too far, the tide is quite rough. ro do you fish anywhere else on this island? fm this is the best place on this little island. there are a couple good spots on the main island as well. we get enough here.

the area where magic works around the settlement is spherical. does that suggest a point source? surely not the staff, they have moved that around. the slab? it did not radiate any magic, nor did the ruined building.

ask pope to lead party to southern end of island. he insists, saying that as long as they are on the island he will accompany them. lio finds tracks and follows them to the southern coast. he wandered a little, did not stay long. out to sea is featureless. can see the main island's coastline. follow tracks to bridge. pope farewell, good luck. please let me know if you succeed. cal do you have a signal so we can avoid conflict with your people? or one of your necklaces? pope the necklaces are nothing special, only a few of us have them. he shows the party a signal.

ro are we likely to run into any of your men? pope not along the shore. there are a couple near the lake.

go. lio has trouble finding alo's tracks but manages it and leads party south. open country following coastline to south.

IslandMapStage3.jpg

go to spot abeam the offshore x. fisherman there, lying down with line attached to his arm. still antimagic. tracks are alone. approach, weapons stowed. close, notice he is a dwarf, asleep lying on rocks. snoring. within earshot ro sir! guy gets up scratches his head hi there. why are you here? ro we are following a very long and interesting story that led us here. guy may I hear it? ro if you have the time. I am ro Kharag. guy I am Boron. others introduce. ro are you from the town north of here? bor no I'm independent. cal how do you manage to stay alive here? bor both tribes are pretty nice and friendly, they just let me do my own thing here. ro how long have you been here Boron? bor about 15 years. ro wow, longer than anyone else we've met. arr where are you from? are you from Minehome? bor yes. explain about sv and Kharag Monastery. ro Boron, how did you find yourself here? bor I was travelling, found this strange cave and there was a staff in there. ro where was this? bor near the dwarven lands. arr where did you end up on the island? bor I came through the centre one in the ruins. arr have you had much to do with the people there? bor I did for a little bit but it became clear that they did not want me there. cal why? bor they like their solitude, I guess. cal do you know much about them? bor only that they have been here for a very long time, a lot longer than me. arr are they dwarves, or humans, or elves? bor a mix of a lot of races, 1/4 dwarf, 1/4 elf. it's been a long time since I've been there. ro you presumably live close to here? bor yes, 1/2 hr walk into the forest. ro tell me Boron, about 10 days ago, did you happen to see an elf wander this way from the north, by the name of alo? bor yes I did. alo, yes. it was very odd. ro this is the story we are following. bor he did come here we had a small chat and he then walked off onto the sea. ro he walked onto the sea? bor yes he searched along the beach then started walking out to sea, not sure how he did it. ro was it a bar? bor it could have been. ro you fish around here? bor yes. ro have you been out there yourself? bor no, never bothered to look. ro alo came here from what we can understand from the hill in the southern part of the island. have you been there yourself? bor yes I have. ro from what we can gather he managed to find a way off this island.

bor no surprise to me I have heard of people getting off this island before. ro is that right? I'd be very interested to hear their stories. bor they haven't come back to tell me how they did it. I do believe that the people in the middle ruins know a lot more about getting off the island than the other tribes. they wouldn't tell me specifics. ro they have this information and they guard it? bor it was a very strange thing about alo though. once he got a fair distance out, he just disappeared. I assumed he got taken out by the sea. I went out after him but I couldn't find him. ro this was 10 days ago, to be fair, but do you recall what alo had with him? bor he had books in a backpack. ro he wasn't carrying anything? bor no… are you here to look for him? ro yes… after he was here, he was found south of Ashhope, the capital on the eastern coast - have you heard of it? bor yes, never been there though. ro he was found killed. bor killed? by who? ro that is part of the story that we have yet to find the details of. bor so he managed to leave the island? ro all information points to that, yes. you saw him walking into the ocean, presumably along a bar, then you saw him vanish? bor I saw him ducking down then I continued fishing for a bit, when I looked out again he was gone. ro lio, can you look around here and see if you can see alo's tracks leaving this area? lio looks around, sees that alo did indeed go out to the ocean and then came back. ro how far out was he? bor quite far. ro is it possible that you just missed him returning? bor it was half an hour walk, so I don't think so. If he did come back it would be while I wasn't here so he would have been out there for a long time.

not sure if alo was a spellcaster. he was a historian. the beach area is antimagic. alo's tracks head towards the centre. everyone but cal can swim. cal stays behind. ro removes her armour, as does arr and lio.

diversion: duck armour. it doesn't rust. or a rogue wearing it to make stealth checks harder.

lio leads others to the bar. ro in front. ro and arr take out yokes. 10 minutes later ro and tr and arr no longer feel the cold water: endure elements is working again I.e. no longer in antimagic field.

look down. see sand and sea, Boron back on coast. are heading towards the x on the map. keep walking. bar is wide enough for one person only.

cal passes Boron a stick. cal can you throw this for me please? Boron throws it cal jumps up and catches it in his teeth, takes it back to Boron and drops it. cal thank you very much. bor you humans are very weird.

ro falls into the water. underwater, can breathe. sees a large brick wall next to her, to her right side. ro surfaces. that was exhilarating. I found a wall. come over, arr. it looks like the corner of a building, with a flat roof only an inch below the surface. ro and arr use yokes to have a look. ro circumnavigates, arr examines roof. walls and roof are made of bricks. 40 x 40 feet square. similar architecture to the ruined buildings on the island, but much larger and intact. arr detect magic. arr sees a magic field about a yard away from the walls, surrounding the structure. illusion school. ro discovers that the wall is about 8 stories tall. there are no doors or windows on any of the four walls.

cal walks up to a tree and starts lightly scratching it. then returns to Boron.

arr returns to the surface, gives yoke to tr and asks him to take a look at the illusion effect around the walls. the magic was designed to make it very difficult to see the building from afar. arr wonders if the building was above water at some point. tr and arr find a trapdoor in the centre of the southern edge of the roof. arr searches for traps, none. it is underwater. arr taps door, trying to determine if there is water on the other side.

lio figures out that the tides are very small here.

think there is no water on other side. door opens upwards, there is a pull handle. no locking mechanism evident. ro holds lit sunrod while arr opens it. as opens, water slides off top and a barrier raises up above waterline. see an empty room below, about 1 storey tall.

cal do you think I should apologise to the tree? I think I might have hurt its feelings. cal goes to tree and hugs it. cal I'm sorry I didn't mean that. you're awesome.

cal notices that Boron would have caught more fish had he been concentrating on his line, but he is more focused on the group out at sea.

there is a ladder leading down into the room. ro moves to climb down. arr why don't I go first? ro ok. arr climbs down, taking the sunrod. empty room, another trapdoor in the floor not quite directly below the first, but again on the southern wall. no traps. arr opens. same thing below: another storey. all descend. this happens another five times, arr thinks he has descended 6 of the 8 floors. the last floor has a trapdoor in the centre of the northern wall. below is another room with a stone slab in the centre. towards a wall is a table and a chair. ro climbs back up and closes all the trapdoors before anyone continues. enter room. slab has a depressed circle, as if someone had pushed an upturned glass into clay. ro looks at chair and table legs: square. ro asks lio to search for tracks. arr searches room. room is 30 x 40. lio cannot find any tracks. search both 40' long walls. arr senses a vertical draft coming from one of the walls, he thinks he has found a secret door. it blows out, into the large room. look for opening mechanisms. find one brick where it is drafty pushes in, allowing an edge to be pulled. no traps. pull. a door opens surprisingly easily. inside is a table with two books on it, and a chair. tr looks at books. one indicates that this island is a meeting place. the second talks about a group of warriors fighting in the style of a historical account. this room looks like it has been visited recently; there is dust on the table but not on or around the books. the patches of dust indicate that there were no other books on the table. choose not to take books, tr takes the time to read the books fully (one hour). a long time ago lots of kings used to meet here in times of peace to discuss matters. it was built by a specific group of people for the purpose and only they could send the kings back. at one point there was a big evil that came along doing lots of bad in the world, with the name of Ruelock. the book also describes two other similar creatures with different names: Alden and Shyran. the kings gathered their best fighters on the island and sent them to fight the three. Alden and Shyran were killed but during the fighting only one person was recorded as surviving and they are not identified in any way. all notes regarding this conflict were removed from royal records, but there is no explanation as to why this happened. the site of the battle is not named. If the references in the text are correct, the battle occurred some 40-50 years ago.

cal do you have any spare bait? yes help yourself I'm going to figure out where those people went. cal thanks, timothy looks a bit hungry. bor you are aware that your friends just disappeared? cal they do that a lot. I'm sure they'll be back.

party return. tell cal what happened, in front of Boron.

bag of holding enters an antimagic field: the bag is a portal to another place. In antimagic, the portal does not work. Anything previously placed in the bag is inaccessible.

The dwarf hears the party talk about rechargeable staffs that teleport the holder some place. bor I don't think those staffs are supposed to take you off this island. ro you know of such staffs? bor it was so long ago… because you seem to be doing good, I will tell you the truth now. 15 years ago when I came here into the middle ruins, I found out a few things. one of them was that there were staffs that took you to a jail cell in the centre ruins. those objects are not used to transport people off the island; they were used to contain people until they could be assessed as to whether they were good or bad. what happens is: someone comes to the island, sees the same item that brought them here and takes it with them. when they find the centre ruins, the people there activate the item and send that person straight to a holding cell to assess them. ro the jailers hold the rings? bor yes. they are the people that built this place. they do not want anyone knowing about this island; they won't let anyone return unless they are proven "trustworthy". if they are not trustworthy, they are let out to wander the island as they see fit. if they are deemed trustworthy, they are sent home. cal why do they not want people knowing about this island? bor I don't know. for whatever reason, it would have been a long time ago. ro were you deemed untrustworthy? bor apparently so, yes. their idea of trustworthiness is an oath that they will not tell anyone about this place, or how to get here.

bor did not know that this place was originally a meeting place of kings. he does now. ro these people in the middle, they are happy for this place to exist, trapping people here? bor they would rather no one came here at all, that they be here by themselves. but they cannot stop the magic. if they did need to escape there would need to be one entrance open. It would be very bad to destroy the entrances on this side because people could appear into nothing and die. If they were to destroy the other side, they might not be able to get back to their own kingdoms if they had to. they travel off the island if they must, but it is very rare. bor has not heard of any great battle.

arr when are we due a backpack? we could use it to get people off this island.

ro it seems that alo made his way to the centre and convinced the people there to send him home. but then he was killed… I wonder if he was watched.

everyone collects their stuff and goes back to the underwater magic area. tr tries a Teleport spell to get everybody to the Mithral Mug in Ashhope. The spell fails. tr has no more Teleport spells prepared.

ro what I am interested in is shutting this place down. arr I agree. basically this place has turned into a big prison.

say to bor that they intend to visit camp c and b before coming back to the centre with the intention of getting everyone home and that he is welcome to accompany them. he agrees.

return to camp c. find pope and report findings. ask whether anyone wants to join expedition. pope wishes to talk to people first. party tell him that they will come back before heading to the centre.

set off for the hill. see scouts, same ones. signal. nothing has happened here. explain that party are not welcome in team b's camp and that they wish to meet with Torik. scouts have small conversation then report that they will send one of their number to relay a message. party are to wait at the hill.

ro remember the people that chased the woman originally? I bet they were from the middle.

four hours later the scout comes back. tor will be here in an hour. he does (5pm). inform tor about all they have discovered. tr we will be visiting these people in the middle. we want to know if you people want to come along for the ride. you don't have to come, we don't care, we are going anyway. it's whether or not you want to be involved. ro and we are being true to our word, letting you know all that we find out. tor I will have to go back to town with this news. I will return tomorrow. ro if you wish to come, be here before 10am. we will not leave before then. tor returns.

tr leads party away from scouts. tr I don't want to spend the whole night in the forest without my magic, waiting for him to return. arr let's go to the closest x on the map, where the star necklace was found. it's about 45 minutes away.

go back to scouts and let them know that if tor comes back tomorrow to let him know that the party will meet him at the place where the star necklace was found. scouts point it out and let them know that they have people there.

go. it is indeed manned by more of tor's scouts. signal and approach. magic works here. let the scouts know that they intend to camp nearby. go out of the scout's sight, into the forest but still in an area where magic works. tr casts Rope Trick and the party spend the night in an interdimensional space.

It is the next morning.

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