Session 31: The Last Temple
General Summary
Once upon a time, in the long, long ago and in the far, far away, there was a goddess. Her name -- well, what she asked to be called by those who first found her -- was Little Sister. Little Sister wasn't, actually, quite sure who she was. Oh, she knew she was a goddess, but beyond that, her memories had been lost. Or taken from her. She knew not.
However, always willing to roll with a few of the proverbial punches, Little Sister set about regaining her powers and her memory. For, you see, in her world -- her reality -- belief and worship are what made a deity powerful. Without that, goddesses and gods might be little more than husks, with powers barely equal to the most modest human magic wielder. The weakest of the gods might even wither away to nothingness.
Along the way, as Little Sister pursued her quest, she and her companions saved the world ... twice ... and once potentially saved all realities from a threat almost beyond comprehension. It was during this final battle for control of existence that Little Sister and her plane-hopping ship, the Hammer of Worlds (she didn't name it) were sent spinning through the multiverse, to crash upon a magic-droughted planet called by its inhabitants simply The Land. On entry, the ship broke up, scattering across the western coastline of the globe's only landmass: the hull and keel in the desert of the Ten Thousand Trackless Sands; the spherical steering helm to what would be called Skull Island in the Golden Ocean; the planes-cutting sails to the outer slopes of the Chrysanthemum mountain range in the mighty Silvermonts; and the prow and figurehead -- containing the essence of Little Sister herself -- into the heart of the Twilight Empire, then only in its late afternoon stages.
It was this latter that was found first by the so-called Temple Thieves, a band of misfit rowdies gathered in the employ of the plotting beholder called Lord Tyranax Calyops. There was a human, Ruhst Nebekoronious, roguish ex-guardian of artifacts; Traginous Avery Thyme, memory-bereft dwarven cleric of storms and thunder; Kelpip Pending, gnome wizard extraordinaire; Perseverance Winterbottom, human and reasonably-cultured barbarian; and, eventually, the dwarven ranger, Dolan Stonefist, sworn enemy of orcs and dedicated finder of random defensive logs.
Over the course of many adventures, the Temple Thieves shifted their loyalty away from Lord Calyops and to Little Sister, helping her find and put back together the pieces of her shattered ship.
That quest has brought them here, to Skull Island, in the lapping waters of the Golden Ocean, where they have fought all manner of terrible creatures and faced down old foes, to finally make their play at gaining the last piece of Little Sister's puzzle: the helm of her Hammership.
One of those old foes stands before them now, examining their battered-but-defiant forms: Nicholas Ash Helle, paladin of Old Mabs, Beautiful Terror, the Ice Maiden ... the Queen of Night and Magic, the ancient monarch of the fae realms, who wants the Hammer as her own.
He faces them, resplendent in his polished black armor, at nearly full strength while the Thieves are on their last reserves of energy. Then he smiles, drops his weapons, and says, "I surrender. Quite."
Shocked, the Thieves are at first unsure what to do. They've never had a prisoner before. The moment is unprecedented in the annals of adventuring parties. After long deliberation, though, they decide that, at worst, he'll make a good canary-in-the-mines -- or at least gelatinous-cube bait -- when they re-enter the vault of the Gearheart gnomes. To be on the safe side, and with Nicholas Helle goading them on, the Thieves decide to let Kelpip place a geas upon the paladin, a spell that will bind him to aiding (and not harming) them while they finish their quest for the helm.
And so this motley group rests, regains their strength and their magic, and ... re-enter the Vault.
In the dark of the subsequent night, the five -- no, wait, seven (including Nicholas Helle and Gnocchi the Gnome Bartender no, wait, six ('cause Gnocchi decides he's had enough of 'adventuring') -- stalwarts re-enter the Minotaur Maze of the Gearheart gnomes after securing, hopefully, the safety of the still-unconscious Little Sister. They make their way carefully but successfully to the southernmost section of the complex, skirting the massive chasm that splits open the middle of the maze and that still glows irregularly with deep fires. In the rooms they explore, they find strange diagrams on flexible, glass-like paper. Kelpip interprets these as the blueprints for some sort of city-destroying 'war machine' that the gnomes were secretly building a hundred years ago or more for the Twilight Empire here on the outskirts of the Sultana of Zhin's rule, perhaps for an attempted onslaught on the capital of the Ten Thousand Trackless Sands, though that part is unclear.
They also discover several traps, as well as three strange gnome-sized circlets, or headbands, which the Thieves collect, but save further study for later.
Exhausting their options on the Maze level, the Temple Thieves decide that the only place they HAVEN'T explored is, well, the fiery chasm. After tying their various lengths of rope together (that's not a euphemism), they end up with 190 feet of rope. Almost enough to extend the 200 ft required to get to the floor of the cavern below.
Descending, the Thieves aren't quite to the ground when another fiery burst illuminates the vast cave, revealing a multi-tiered temple-like structure carved out of the stone wall to the south, on the higher tier of which stalks and claws and roars a three-headed mechanical dragon! In its gearwork chest, the Thieves can see beating a spherical, golden heart: the helm of Little Sister's Hammership!
Soooo...mixed bag, that
The adventurers scramble for position, Percy leaping from the rope and sprinting toward the danger while Kelpip and Traginous clamber over Dolan to get lower down on the rope, Kelpip using his magical boots so as to actually make it down to the ground after a bit of a jump at the end and then getting to Percy so that he can cast a spell of hasting upon her. Dolan, glaring a bit at his comrades, loops his ankle in the rope and lets himself hang upside down so that he can fire off a few shots with his repeating crossbow. Ruhst, not wanting to show off, just winds the rope around his waist so that he can get leverage with his bow before he, too, begins shooting at the metal behemoth opposite them. Traginous, from her new, lower perch, summons up a wall of flashing knives to surround the dragon
Unfortunately, Percy has drawn the dragon's attention. All three heads belch fire in various directions as the construct smashes its way out of Traginous' blade barrier. Percy is, of course, caught is a crossfire of napalm, but so to are the climbers on the rope. More importantly ... so is the rope.
Ruhst and Nicholas Helle fall the furthest, some 45 to 60 feet, respectively, but all of the Thieves remaining on the rope wind up in a pile on the shattered stone of the cavern floor.
The dragon takes to the air and prepares for its next assault.
Percy races up the side of the dragon's temple, hardly even noticing that she's scaling a sheer surface at speed and then leaps out into space to land on the Gearheart dragon's back, plunging her cursed vorpal sword into the thing's spine.
Kelpip, still using his boots, climbs the wall more slowly, but he, too, in strange and very un-Kelpip-like fashion, leaps over to the back of the flying, three-headed, metal dragon. Traginous disentangles herself from her companions and calls down the holy light of Aetherious to strike the dragon.
The dragon, for its part, does a barrel roll.
Percy and Kelpip lose their grips, plummeting 25 ft to the cavern floor (there's a lot of falling in this one). Then the Gearheart dragon pursues them, biting and snapping with its many jaws and lashing out with its maul-like limbs! Both of our stalwarts take hard blows.
But then Nicholas is there with his fae great sword, Moonhaunt, taking out great swathes of metal with each stroke. And Ruhst is there, firing arrows from a crossbow. And Dolan, sending lightning and damage down upon the dragon from his longbow. But Kelpip falls, nonetheless, unable to weather the gnashing of those massive, steel teeth.
Undaunted, as is her wont, Percy rises from where she has been knocked aside by a mighty blow from the construct's hammer claws, the vorpal blade shining in her grip, and she rends cast iron ribcage bones asunder. Her prehensile tail darts in, wraps around the pulsing, golden heart of the clockwork dragon ... and rips it free!
The war machine of the Gearheart gnomes, designed to be a city slayer, falls, the heat leaving its black eyes and its sooty throat, and the three circlets the adventurers found earlier disintegrate, the belated knowledge coming to the Thieves that the torcs could have been used, perhaps, to control the creature.
Nothing to be done about that now, though, so Traginous rushes to Kelpip's side and revives him with her healing magic, and then the Thieves all just stand around and stare at one another.
But outside, where Gnocchi 'guards' a dome of stone designed by Traginous to protect the prone body of a goddess, the dome is sundered from within by beams of golden light, and Little Sister rises from the shards, wings wide and white and glowing.
Gnocchi cowers, but the goddess pays him no heed. Instead, she flies straight for the entrance of the gnomish Vault, soars above the maze, and descends into the chasm, there to hover above her companions, a beatific smile upon her divine face, for the Hammer has a helm again. All that is left is for the Thieves to return to Etherian Elps, break into the stronghold of Lord Tyranax Calyops, and make off with the pieces of the ship stored there. Then Little Sister can find her way home ...
Once upon a time, in the long ago and far away, there was a goddess called Little Sister. Now ... she sets sail once more, and universes shall quake in wake of her passage.
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