Sessions 1 - 5: The Explorers Report
General Summary
The Geographica Expedition is the largest undertaking of its kind since the death of the undying Old Dragons and the rise of mortals. The world of Coyne (called Helion by the people of the country/continent of Everian) is mostly a mystery. Airships with keels made from the still-levitating bones of the Old Dragons ply the skies between cities (the flying city of Cloudborne, where angels tread; Vangelica Falls, where lava falls course down the sides of airy, tiered plazas; Parabalus, the walking city; Harrow, Kember, and Delve), but the landscape below the creaking decks of the Altitude ships is little known. It is the mission of the _Geographica_ to change this -- to explore the ruins of the Ancients, to map new routes, found new cities, to go where only the dragon born have gone before.
The _Geographica_ herself, a marvel of magic, technology, and engineering, is being constructed in Cloudborne, where temples to the 'angels' -- the close-enough-that-might-as-well-be deities of Helion -- and the libraries of the world's finest scholars cling to the sides of vast flying islands held aloft because of the huge bones of Old Dragons still buried within their rock.
Our explorers, newly hired by the Geographica Society, have some down time as construction completes and as competitions for crew slots continue in the arenas of far-away Vangelica Falls. The human warlock and cleric, Cerice, spends much of that time meditating in the halls of the temple to her deity, while the bugbear, Happy, tries to find pleasant places to read her books, and the Kenku bard, Fallenbridge, pops in and out of taverns, looking for new stories to tell his fellow travelers.
However, this peaceful downtime comes to an end as Happy, perched on a high ledge above a broad, white-paved plaza, is startled to discover that a previously-inert gargoyle sitting next to her is not so inert after all. It shakes off dust and bird droppings, spreads its wings, and glides down into the plaza to attack Cerice and Fallenbridge, who are crossing on their way to meet their friend!
While the two on the ground contend with this sudden threat, Happy, far above, finds herself in her own fight: with an invisible quasit that has just used diabolical magic to animate the gargoyle statue and initiate this assault.
With magic and weapons, and the loss of some quantity of their own blood, Cerice and Fallenbridge break the gargoyle into a shower of marble chunks, much to the applause of other strollers on the plaza. However, they also see that Happy, above, is having a harder time of it. Even as Cerice rushes toward the tower to try to get to her friend in time to help, the quasit lays the bugbear low and escapes. Happily, Happy does not fall, but her wounds are still grievous (and her death saves atrocious) and she is within moments of bleeding out when Cerice arrives and manages to stabilize her.
Once the trio is healed up, and not believing that the attack was just a random encounter on the holy streets of Cloudborne, they set off to investigate, hoping to find a lead on the quasit.
Instead, they take on a job to clear "giant cockroaches" out of the basement of a gnome-owned shop where flying mechanical trinkets made from slivers of Old Dragon bone can be bought.
Going into the basement, which turns out to be an excavated section of the city's underground that the gnome's have been using to access and illegally mine a vein of Old Dragon bone, the heroes discover that the 'cockroach' is not, in fact, a cockroach, but rather some sort of giant, mutant centipede that wants to eat them whole -- and nearly does eat Happy, rendering her unconsious for the second time in the same week. Fortunately, she has a resilient skull and an even more resilient nature.
Losing the trail of the quasit, the trio returns to the _Geographica_ for their daily muster, only to be told that since they've acquired a name for being 'troubleshooter adventurer types', they've been tasked with going back to Engineering Pod 5, level 4, to investigate reports of ghosts. Although the officers scoff at the idea of ghosts on a ship that has -- so far -- had no casualties during construction, they don't want to annoy the engineers by not investigating the claims.
Following up on tales told by several engineers, the trio finds a section of the pod that bears the odor of death. They also discover that a section of the outer plating, used primarily for access, has been tampered with ... apparently ripped off the side of the ship by brute force, a task that left talon scoring in the thick metal of the engine pod.
Suspecting something evil afoot, Cerice begins a systematic search of the pod while channeling Detect Evil. In Aliens-like fashion, the positive Ping of the detection attempt doesn't seem to lead them to any physical creatures ... until two ghouls and a ghast attack from within the crawlspace above them!
The fight in the narrow corridors of Engineering is desperate, but in the end the three heroes prevail, taking the body of the ghast to their lieutenant before it decomposes completely.
A couple of days later, that same lieutenant tasks the Troubleshooters again. This time to follow a paper trail to the source of a crate that was supposed to have engine parts but instead was filled with ghoulish undeath.
That trail leads the Troubleshooters first to a warehouse, and then to a pier from which they can see a long-abandoned and supposedly 'haunted' flying island off the coast of theirs. A fishing boat captain by the name of Harbinger agrees to take them out the next morning, when, "Yar, the winds be right fer flyin' ta that accursed place."
Harbinger is as good as his word, and drops the trio off on the coast of this mysterious island, which had, some 10 or 15 years prior, been abandoned by the miners and the Mercantile Clane who had been working it.
There, they come across a circle of stone pylons, in the center of which is a field of black gravel and a not-unrecently used firepit. There are also the skeletons of a couple of animals and part of an elk ... all of which rise into hellish unlife as the party draws close enough to awaken their hunger!
After putting down the zombified elk (the 'zelk') and the other skeletal critters, and after a short rest, the Troubleshooters continue on toward an opening in the central peak of the island they hope will lead them to the person/entity/or whatever behind the attacks on them and the _Geographica_. But as they ascend the stairs to a broad courtyard facing the entrance, a boiling mass of fur and frenzy bursts from the door carved out of the mountainside.
Dozens of blue-furred, blue-skinned goblin-like creatures wielding crude weapons swarm out at them, and though they fight hardily, all seems lost until another explorer, a gnome barbarian named Leonardo, who had come to the island in search of its fabled 'lost' treasure, comes upon the battle and throws himself into the fray with gusto.
Killing or driving off the remaining feral attackers, the team headed into the mountain, where they find a large, pillared chamber, a pile of art objects collected by the blue-furred things, and a huge portal to another place: the slope of a frozen mountain, beyond which can be seen a bleak city stretching out beneath the dim red light of an eclipsed sun.
The party gathers the treasure and retreats to a camp in the woods nearby, putting off a decision on whether to continue the exploration or whether to return to the _Geographica_ and report.
They would not be given the chance to take up that discussion again.
During the night, something comes and takes them. The four explorers awaken in a net carried by three owl harpies ... being carried over the very same alien city they had seen through the sparking portal the day before!
The owl harpies take their captives to the top of a tower where they are tied up and forced to wait while two of the harpies descended into the tower to retrieve what turns out to be a pot for boiling their meals alive. But before those two could return, and while the third is busy investigating a sound she'd heard on the far side of the tower, the adventurers escape their bonds and, with the aid of Fallenbridge's _featherfall_ magic, leap over the side of the tower and float to the street below.
There, they face off against the pursuing owl harpy in a bloody battle that looks like it will kill them all. But help comes from an unlikely source: a tiefling motioning them into a nearby doorway.
Leonardo has to be dragged off of the harpy by Happy, but the four make it into the tiefling's building just as the other two harpies fling themselves off the tower to come to the aid of their sister.
The tiefling, Variance, leads the group deep into the bowels of the city, following the tracks of an underground carriage system that he says will lead them to his master, who will be '...very interested in meeting you new strangers.'
Unable to make the entire distance in one march, the group beds down in a central switching room, where a long-decayed carriage still waited for passengers and a trip that would never come.
After finishing their much-needed rest, the group questions Variance, who is not overly forthcoming, but before they can press him further, the owl harpy who had been assigned to guard them at the tower, and who is now suffering "shame at my failure, the only redemption to kill you all!," charges into the chamber aiming to do just that!
Despite her zeal, the single harpy is no match for the adventurers who have now been through so much (and who had leveled up to Lvl 5 by the time they woke up), and is soon put down despite having been able to charm both Leonardo and Variance and dig her talons into both Cerice and Happy multiple times.
Tired of the constant fighting (except for Leonardo, who was peeved that someone else got the kill because he had been dazed for most of the fight), the party follow Variance back into the maze of tunnels and rooms, until he finally brings them to a large, domed chamber beneath the streets, where stormwater run-off cascades in two great showers, between which is erected a throne of bone-and-hide lording over a veritable sea (or at least small lake)'s worth of coin, art, weapons, and gold.
Flanking the throne are two humanoid black cats in ceremonial armor. Around the room are a dozen or so tieflings. And upon the throne is a massive, humanoid tiger with back-facing palms, dressed in silks and other finery and smoking an elaborately-carved pipe -- a rakshasa: the Lord Raktavi.
In the ensuing conversation, the rakshasa gives to the adventurers two great revelations: the first is that the armies of his foe, Zarloff, amass at the portal to their world, preparing perhaps for invasion, or perhaps for something even darker. The second is that the world they know, Helion, is not a separate world from where they are now, but rather the flip side of this one ... making a whole that is called Coyne.
Coyne, a world-sized disk, one side lit by a great sun-dirigible and called Helion; the other side called Orlock, where the sprawling and vast city of Morbus Gravis festers beneath a red sun being fed upon by a radioactive beast called the Devourer. Two side to one world, connected only by occasional -- and fitfully erratic -- magical portals, and by a great hole that pierces the center of the world, where the Last Gods are said to live.
But ... what Lord Raktavi wants with the explorers is yet to be discovered.
Rewards Granted
180 gp taken from the fallen owl harpy
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