SS.3.1 Amongst the Clouds

Session Preface

Vorothruun, even as the teleportation spell takes effect and your body begins to lose its presence and substance, you feel the newly socketed gem in the Rod of the Pactkeeper dig into your side and your onyx eye twitch ever so slightly. You wonder to yourself if these objects somehow transcend the weave itself and thus maintain their composure even when being so directly altered by magic. It is a comforting and enticing musing that lasts but for a moment before you find yourself returned to the material plane as before.
Parathrax, the parting words of your father still take the forefront of your thoughts. Both his encouragement and the challenge he set before you fuel your inner spirit further. Knowing that he is alive and mending, but that he and Avraathe have much healing to do before they will be back to the way of things, is a bittersweet answer to questions that have lingered since the day you left.
Endriel, you continue to methodically process all the pieces of intel you have gathered since first stumbling upon the hunting party of the Feathered some tenday or more ago. Unfinished letters, bizarre rituals, cryptic demands, and to say nothing of the goals and mysterious purpose of the company you now keep, all unwind themselves into a dizzying array of connections and coincidences all in the flash of an eye as you depart Everlund.
As the arcane swirls of energy around each of you dissipate, you each find yourselves in an angled-ceiling attic. Light beams from a window catch the displaced dust and cobwebs drifting around you. The floorboards creak and groan under your weight as you make your way to the trapdoor that leads to the second floor study. Through the window, the sun rises on a beautiful winter day in City of Skilled Hands as another bustling day of work and commerce begins.

Session Summary

Following the final meeting with Parathraaj and their short venture to Everlund, the party arrives in the Harper row-home in Neverwinter. After a brief interaction with Sandyse Thunderquill, Vorothruun blasts a hole in the roof to try and determine where The Watcher is leading him towards the next devotion of Ragnalla. Realizing the internal sense nudged him towards the clouds above, Vorothruun made his way to learn more from Seymour.
Upon arriving in the shop, the party met Thokk, the tooth-collecting and tavern-namesake barbarian Parathrax had fought alongside previously. He and Thokk returned to the Dancing Stallion to drink and discuss Thokk's reason for being in Neverwinter. Through Vorothruun's conversation with Seymour and Parathrax's conversation with Millie, the barmaid of the Dancing Stallion, the two dragonborn brothers independently learn the year is 1487, nearly 18 months later than they believed.
After reconciling the time difference over a substantial series of shots and flagons, the four adventurers make their way to Castle Never to meet Lord's Alliance intern Bambra Gallagher who informs the party of their task - to respond to a missive and potential parlay for peach written by Majordomo Balakur on behalf of Olthanas. If the cloud giants seem sincere, the representatives are to keep the peace at all costs. If it is to be an ambush, however, the cloud giants must be vanquished before an assault on Neverwinter can take place!
The party elects to ascend to the cloud giant's keep via Bambra's small airship, leaping from high above and using a feather fall rune to break their fall at the last moment. The find themselves in massive luscious gardens where they are abruptly detected by a shambling mound. With quick thinking and ingenuity, Endriel froze and smashes a gate lock, allowing the party to escape the creature descending upon them just in time. Once they make their way to through the interior garden, narrowingly avoiding a pair of black oozes hiding in the grout of the walkway, the party is ambushed by a Chimera. Though gravely wounded by the dragon head's initial fire breath, the party quickly overtake the creature and return once more to exploring for Vorothruun's gem.
The warlock soon finds his prize, but within a painting only he can see for what it truly is, a cloud giant wearing a crown with the gem within it, choking the life out of Vorothruun himself. Before he can ascertain how to retrieve the stone, his brother drags him away to meet Olthanas and Balakur, hoping to assure peace before stealing from the giants.
After a short interrogation of the goblins preparing dinner for the giants, the party make their way to the massive Tower of Judgement in which the two cloud giants await their arrival. They find Olthanas to be surprisingly level-headed and reasonable, while Balakur is equally cynical and suspicious. Once she realizes the small people and Olthanas are in agreement, she springs her trap, activating a magical necklace she had given to Olthanas as a gift, as it begins choking him. Vorothruun and Endriel team up to banish both Balakur and the choker, buying enough time to free Olthanas and prepare a brutal counterstrike against his majordomo.
Once she is weakened, Parathrax uses a Zone of Truth to interrogate her, during which she reveals the depths of her hatred for "small people", her loyalty to Olthanas' father Count Stratovan, and their plan to see the kingdom of Ostaria returned to the height of its power. She also describes the nature of the mirror portal painting which leads to the second floor of her chambers.
Vorothruun applies this knowledge to the crowned cloud giant painting, sending himself and his companions into a dizzying and disturbing vision of a crowned monstrosity looming over them.

The Crowned Cloud Giant Painting

As you align the mirror with the crowned cloud giant painting, you see the mirror take on a translucent film as if beyond the glass is reality itself, the true reality of this moment. As you cross the threshold, your peripheral vision darkens. A constricting grip wraps around your neck. Air fills your lungs once in a desperate gasp as the life force slowly leaks from your mouth. Choking. Gasping. The giant's hand around you, his finger nails pressed against the whole of your neck pinch together your spine and mind until you feel there is nothing left of you.
A silent scream permeates from your lips uncontrollably as you look down and your hands begin to fade into shadow. As the darkness overtakes you, The inky black blur of this reality blends with your form until you are unrecognizable, unseeable, unknowable.
In this nothingness of an immeasurable truth you lie still and restless, confined by tentacles wrapped taught around your shapeless form. Without context of time, the experience only measured in the pulsing constriction of your restriction. This purgatory of being-not being-feeling-thinking-not-dreaming-waking-choking-dying-living-unliving-waiting continues, unremittingly. Slowly, at first imperceptibly save for the corners of your fragmented and scattered mind, the tightening of the tentacles trapping you in this formless consciousness begin to unwind. Your mind untangles and two thoughts collide in unison. Test. Success. As your corpreal form returns once more to the shadow and blurred reality, you discover that while you have indeed endured a trial of measuring your worth, it is perhaps not the last.
It is at this moment you feel your full physical form return into being. Next to you stand your companions. The four of you are not alone however. Before you towers a monstrosity not even you have seen in your nightmares. A cloud giant in form, but the icy white skin instead appears a dull and sagging grey with dark blue veins tangled in and out of its skin like a sparrow's nest. Underneath the battered metal armor, punctured and bloodied across the chest, something pulses and coils unseen. The giant's arms outstretched towards you like vipers. The same winding veins worm their way over and under the skin, ending in a pair of translucent and slimy tentacles slithering towards you. Most disturbingly, where the cloud giant's gaze would meet your own is instead a demented single eye twisting and convulsing in panicked pulses. Where the eyelashes should be are yet another pair of razor sharp tentacles above and below the unnerving eye gazing towards you. The monstrosity lets out a single guttural growl and crashes towards you.

Plot type

Session