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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 7305029" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 40: CLOUD CUCKOOLAND</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 12</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Castillan Ivenheart, elf bounder 12</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Darrien, half-elf ranger 12</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 12</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Gilbert Fung, human wizard 12</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 12</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Ingebold Battershield, dwarven cleric 12 (Moradin)</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Jinkadoodle Dundernoggin, gnome illusionist 5</p><p></p><p>Game Session Date: 16 December 2017</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>"So," asked Jinkadoodle, "what do you think?"</p><p></p><p>"Hmm," said Gilbert, frowning.</p><p></p><p>"It will really stay up here by itself, with nobody controlling it?" asked Finoula.</p><p></p><p>"Absolutely," replied the gnome illusionist, getting up from the dragonfly ship's helm and standing at its side. "As of right now, nobody's piloting the ship, and it isn't falling back down to the planet below. It's called a 'geosynchronous orbit,' whatever that is. Melony Sal didn't really explain all of the terms she used in her notes, but she obviously knew her stuff."</p><p></p><p>"Hmm," repeated Gilbert Fung.</p><p></p><p>"So we can just park the ship out here in wildspace above the planet and return to Battershield Keep using the <em>teleport runes</em> downstairs?" asked Hagan.</p><p></p><p>"Exactly. As long as we keep the <em>teleport carpet</em> unrolled and in place at Battershield Keep, we can pop down or up as needed."</p><p></p><p>"And nobody will mess with it up here?" asked Darrien.</p><p></p><p>"Who's to mess with it?" asked the illusionist. "According to your spelljamming friends, our world is well off the beaten track and away from the major trade routes. There shouldn't be a bunch of other spelljamming vessels flitting about the place, wondering what's up with this dragonfly ship in geosynchronous orbit."</p><p></p><p>"There were those grell," pointed out Ingebold.</p><p></p><p>"Yeah, but you said they flew around in a giant jellyfish. What would they want with a ship like this, that they couldn't even use? You need to be able to sit at the helm to control this vessel, and sitting's one thing a grell can't do."</p><p></p><p>"Aye, good point."</p><p></p><p>"Hmm," Gilbert added again, deep in thought.</p><p></p><p>"And it'll save us the cost of building a hangar by the keep, and it will prevent anyone from seeing the ship flying around near Kordovia and coming to investigate it. And anytime we need to use it, it's just a step on the carpet away."</p><p></p><p>"Sounds good," observed Binkadink, somewhat proud of his cousin's plan.</p><p></p><p>"Makes sense to me," added Castillan.</p><p></p><p>"Hmm," repeated Gilbert for a final time. "Okay, make sense. We do it."</p><p></p><p>"Great!" replied Jinkadoodle, taking his place back at the helm. "So where to now? Taking Hagan back to his parents?" The half-orc had stated a desire to visit his parents, who lived over at the far eastern edge of the vast Vesve Forest; everybody had come along because Jinkadoodle had wanted to demonstrate his brilliant new idea for parking the vessel in orbit.</p><p></p><p>"If you please," replied the half-orc sorcerer. Wezhley, his weasel familiar, bounced up and down on his master's shoulder in excitement - he liked Hagan's human mother, who always fed him tasty treats when they visited.</p><p></p><p>"Off we go!" replied the gnome pilot, bringing the dragonfly vessel down out of its geosynchronous orbit and back into the upper atmosphere, chattering about his plans for the future. "I think I'm going to circumnavigate the globe, making maps of the land masses as I go," he said. "I may even bring Zalian along, for his expertise." Zalian Darisath was the castle historian and keeper of the kingdom's collection of maps; Jinkadoodle couldn't wait to see the elf's expression when he first got to see entire continents laid out before him!</p><p></p><p>But the pilot found himself talking mostly to Gilbert, who seemed only half-interested; the others had scattered about the ship, most of them heading up to the upper deck, if nothing else than for the excellent view. They knew from previous experience that the upper atmosphere was ridiculously cold, but once they started dropping down to cloud level it was much more bearable.</p><p></p><p>And then a scream rang out from somewhere nearby.</p><p></p><p>This in itself was a bit unusual, given that the dragonfly vessel was still flying up among the clouds - there was nothing nearby to house the owner of the scream: no mountains, certainly no other flying vessels! But it was definitely a woman's scream, and Finoula's discerning elven ears classified it as having been composed of equal parts pain and terror.</p><p></p><p>Those on the upper deck scattered to the rails on either side of the ship and looked about; below, Ingebold and Gilbert peered through the bubble-windows that comprised the dragonfly's "eyes" - for Jinkadoodle, sitting at the ship's helm, had his senses expanded to all around the ship, and thus heard the scream outside from his position on the vessel's bridge, and had alerted the others.</p><p></p><p>"There! To the left!" called Finoula. They'd spent months out in wildspace aboard various spelljamming vessels, but they had never bothered picking up nautical terminology; "left" was still "left" to them, not "port."</p><p></p><p>Jinkadoodle steered the ship to the left, where a patch of green added a surprising splash of color to the white cloudscape. As they approached closer, they could see a cloud island, flat along the top and dropping down to a triangular shape below, with two enormous trees sprouting in the middle of the upper surface. At one end of the island stood a tall structure seemingly shaped of cloud-stuff, with a metallic projection sticking out of the roof at an angle. The other side of the trees looked relatively flat and empty.</p><p></p><p>"I'm going to try to land her!" Jinkadoodle called.</p><p></p><p>"Will it support our weight?" asked Ingebold, worried.</p><p></p><p>"It's supporting the weight of those massive trees!" countered the gnome pilot. And they were indeed massive, each easily three or four times the size of a normal apple tree as one might find on the ground below. As Jinkadoodle brought the vessel to a safe landing along the outer strip, the screams continued - they seemed to be coming from over by the cloud-building.</p><p></p><p>Castillan was the nearest to the ladder on the upper deck; he flipped it over the side and was climbing down the rungs almost as they unfurled. He spotted movement in the canopies of the trees, but it could have only been the wind. Still, he kept his senses sharp as he disembarked and took a tentative step onto the ground of the cloud island. Over by the trees the cloud had been covered in topsoil from the planet below; over here, it was pure white, fluffy cloud - a distinctly unusual feeling to be stepping upon a substance that normally couldn't hold any weight at all. The bounder's ears could hear the screaming, coming in fits and bursts, but also the sound of another, deeper, feminine voice, this one demanding, "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?"</p><p></p><p>Hagan was the next to disembark from the ship, his weasel perched on his shoulder as normal. Like the bounder before him, the sorcerer looked up at the trees overhead, having detected movement there as well. The half-orc's darkvision allowed him to pick up a shape hidden in the shadows of the branches: a creature with an avian build, but lacking feet of any kind; instead, the beast seemed to have an extra set of wings. The thing was much larger than a man, and there seemed to be smaller versions of the strange beast hidden elsewhere throughout the two giant trees. "Bird-things in the trees!" Hagan called out, warning his friends of a potential source of danger.</p><p></p><p>Up on the deck, Darrien raced to the front of the vessel rather than heading over to the ladder, as many of his friends were doing. He pulled out an arrow and nocked it in his <em>Arachnibow</em>, ready to let fly if the largest of the bird-things made a move in their direction.</p><p></p><p>Gilbert had popped up from the lower deck by this time. (His earth elemental, Mudpie, had seen that they were about to go walking around on a cloud and immediately headed back for the lower deck, where there were walls all around and he could pretend he wasn't suspended up in the sky.) The wizard spotted the bird-thing in the trees and immediately identified it. "That an arrowhawk!" he cried. "What it doing here? It belong on Elemental Plane of Air!"</p><p></p><p>"Maybe it took a wrong turn," suggested Binkadink, readying his glaive for action just as the elder arrowhawk flapped its four wings and sprang from the tree. It made a bee-line for Darrien, who plunked an arrow deep into its chest before its serrated beak clamped down over the archer's shoulder. Binkadink raced over on his extended <em>gnomish stilt-boots</em> and stabbed at the beast with his magical glaive, causing it to release Darrien from its beak. It squawked noisily in pain and outrage, its cries mingling with the screams of pain from the unseen woman somewhere ahead.</p><p></p><p>Seeing that Binkadink and Darrien seemed to have the beast under control, Ingebold scrambled down the ship's ladder. She was a healer, and the screaming woman sounded like she was dying! Right behind her came her Battle-Sister, Finoula, casting a <em>barkskin</em> spell upon herself as she pulled <em>Tahlmalaera</em> from its scabbard.</p><p></p><p>Down on the ground, Castillan found himself the target of two of the man-sized arrowhawks, one striking from either side. He did his best to avoid their attacks, but one of them clamped onto his upper arm with its beak, drawing blood through the bounder's leather armor. He wriggled from its grasp and fell back towards the ship, snapping his fingers and bringing forth his shortbow as he did so. He got a shot off at the one who had bitten him, catching it at the point where one of its four wings met its body.</p><p></p><p>Behind him, Hagan cast a <em>chain lightning</em> spell, targeting one of the man-sized arrowhawks he'd spotted in the other tree as his primary foe, and sending arcs of electricity from that one to a good half-dozen of its neighbors. "That not going to work!" called Gilbert from behind the sorcerer. "They immune to electricity!"</p><p></p><p>"Now you tell me!" complained the sorcerer.</p><p></p><p>"Looks like nobody told them!" pointed out Castillan. Indeed, Hagan's spell had fried at least two of the man-sized arrowhawks and a few even smaller ones - presumably the young of the nest. They fell from the trees like rain, their blackened bodies devoid of life.</p><p></p><p>"Hmm," mused Gilbert. "They must be slightly different species or something."</p><p></p><p>Up on deck, Darrien pumped arrow after arrow into the elder arrowhawk. It retaliated by biting the half-elf ranger, but then opted to fly laterally (Binkadink had gotten in a good hit with his glaive as it flew away), off to the side of the vessel. It then proved Gilbert's point by arching its nimble tail beneath its body and blasting Darrien with an attack of force energy, similar to that used in the common wizard's <em>magic missile</em> spell. As Gilbert well knew, normal arrowhawks shot electrical rays and were immune to electricity; these variants definitely lacked the electrical immunity and had evolved a different offensive capability.</p><p></p><p>But Gilbert was down on the ground by the ship, dealing with the arrowhawks in and near the trees. He cast a <em>solid fog</em> spell that encompassed the better part of both trees, imprisoning those arrowhawks still among the giant branches. He couldn't help but notice the size of the apples growing from the trees - they were each the size of a terrestrial pumpkin!</p><p></p><p>Two arrowhawks had been outside the range of the portly wizard's spell and one flew over to attack Finoula. The ranger cut it down with her longsword without breaking her stride. Castillan, meanwhile, decided he liked it better back up on the ship and started climbing the ladder, all the while being attacked by the second of the arrowhawks he'd been fighting. He, too, got to experience the blast of a tail ray as he climbed back up on board. But the arrowhawk, focused on the bounder, failed to notice he was now within range of Binkadink's glaive, and that oversight proved to be fatal to the four-winged creature.</p><p></p><p>Inside both tree canopies, additional arrowhawks of different sizes struggled through the <em>solid fog</em> to reach the freedom of the open air. Not being able to see through the magical fog to target the arrowhawks with another <em>chain lightning</em> spell, Hagan made do with a <em>fireball</em> engulfing several that had finally found the freedom of the skies. They fell to the ground beside the trees, burned to a crisp.</p><p></p><p>Gilbert eventually dispelled his <em>solid fog</em> spell, reasoning there couldn't be many more arrowhawks imprisoned within and noticing it was blocking the ground passageway between the trees that would allow the heroes to advance to where the screams were emanating. He was right about the arrowhawks; by this point there were only two still among the branches. But one of them was another elder arrowhawk, and it flapped over to the other side of the ship and blasted Castillan, just as its counterpart blasted Darrien. Castillan fired back with an arrow from his shortbow. From the ground below, Ingebold cast a <em>blindness/deafness</em> spell on the one attacking Castillan, hoping to deprive the great beast of its sight, but the creature shrugged off the spell's effects.</p><p></p><p>Darrien finally dropped the elder arrowhawk he'd been battling; it fell, its body covered in arrow-shafts, beyond the perimeter of the cloud island and to the ground far below. With a final squawk of outrage, the other elder arrowhawk dropped its battle with Castillan and flapped away, opting to find another nest somewhere safe.</p><p></p><p>The arrowhawks having been bested, the adventurers were now able to face the source of the screams. Binkadink found a faster way to the ground by leaping over the railing onto the front of the ship, across the dragonfly's head (he could see his cousin through the "eye" viewports, still at his station at the ship's helm, ready to depart at a moment's notice), and jumping to the ground from there. Once past the giant apple trees and the arrowhawk corpses littered throughout the area, the heroes could see the unsettling tableau just ahead.</p><p></p><p>A human woman lay screaming on the ground, blood gushing from her right shoulder at the point where her arm had been ripped from her body. Standing above her was a blue-skinned cloud giantess, using the human arm in her hand as a club to beat the screaming woman. "Why are you hitting yourself?" the giantess repeated, giggling to herself at her joke.</p><p></p><p>"Stop it, Mistress!" pleaded the prone woman in a voice lowering in volume as the life ebbed from her body.</p><p></p><p>The giantess stood up, holding the severed arm up such that its fingers stroked her own chin, and muttered, "Hmm, should I?" as if lost in thought.</p><p></p><p>Ingebold realized getting to her patient would be difficult with the cloud giantess there standing above her; she also realized she didn't need to actually get to her patient to heal her. Using her <em>light mace of ranged healing</em>, she channeled a <em>heal</em> spell through it to strike the prone woman. The ray of healing energy struck true, sealing up the wounded shoulder and restoring full vitality to the stricken woman.</p><p></p><p>This did not go unnoticed by the cloud giantess. Still holding the woman's severed arm in her right hand, she bent over and picked her up by the neck with her left hand. "You're all better, <strong>Junia</strong>!" she exclaimed. "Well, we can't have that, now, can we, silly?" With a grunt of effort, she flung the woman far to the left, where she plummeted off the side of the narrow cloud island and went plunging through the wispy clouds to her death, far below. There was nothing any of the heroes could do to save her, and they stared at the giggling giantess in shock.</p><p></p><p>Finoula was the first to react. Touching a hand to her amulet, she transformed her body into a blast of living lightning and attacked the giggling giantess, reforming into her elven body on the other side, by the wooden door to the cloud structure. The giantess staggered under the attack but didn't stop her infernal laughter, even as she spun on her heel and punched the ranger for her effrontery with a blow than nearly broke bones. Castillan raced up, shooting the giggling menace with his shortbow; an arrow to the gut didn't make her stop laughing, merely use the severed arm to wave hello to her attackers. She did take several steps to her right, away from Finoula.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink charged right at the cloud giantess and discovered - too late - that the lack of seriousness in the blue-skinned giantess's demeanor did not mean she wasn't paying proper attention to the battle at hand; instead, she'd maneuvered herself so the charging gnome fighter would fall directly into the unseen pit she now stood behind.</p><p></p><p>Finoula gasped in horror as she saw the little gnome plunge through the seemingly-solid floor of cloudstuff, wincing at his scream of surprise. But unlike poor Junia, whose continuing screams were audible as she fell to her death below, Binkadink's was short in duration. "I'm okay!" he called up from the pit, which fortunately had a solid bottom some ten feet or so down below the surface.</p><p></p><p>"Are you truly all right?" asked a feminine voice beside the gnome. He looked over and saw he was in the interior of a hollow cube some ten feet to a side; the "ceiling" was covered over by wispy cloud material no more solid than that of any other cloud, whereas the floor and walls of the interior were made of the same, solid cloud-stuff that made up the bulk of the floating island. And there, hovering with concern over him, was a human woman. "My name is <strong>Tanabelle</strong>, she said.</p><p></p><p>"Binkadink," said the gnome by way of introduction. "What's going on?"</p><p></p><p>"My mistress, <strong>Zaralia</strong>, went crazy this morning. She tried out a summoning ritual, to contact a scholar of the outer planes. Something must have gone wrong - when she came back downstairs, she was insane, and attacked Junia! I was here, in the privy--"</p><p></p><p>"This is a <em>privy</em>?" Binkadink interrupted, looking about him in sudden concern. But the walls and floor were an unblemished white.</p><p></p><p>"Yes, the wastes are absorbed by the cloud and filtered away," Tanabelle explained, irritated by the gnome's apparent interest in the cloud's toilet facilities being higher than his interest in the situation at hand. "I was here when she first attacked, so I stayed hidden. Is Junia...?"</p><p></p><p>"Dead," replied Binkadink, with no thought of breaking the news gently. Tanabelle covered her face in her hands and began to cry. But the gnome had other, more pressing things on his mind, like making sure nobody else fell into this pit - this <em>privy!</em> Channeling magical energy from his gnomish heritage, he cast <em>dancing lights</em> such that one appeared at the top of each corner of the pit, marking off its boundaries; the gnome could see their glow through the wispy cloudstuff covering the pit's opening. "Stay here!" he commanded Tanabelle and started climbing up out of the pit, after having noticed a giant-sized ladder carved in the western side of the pit and a human-sized ladder carved in the eastern side.</p><p></p><p>Darrien, meanwhile, had shot Zaralia with a few arrows as he cautiously approached. Finoula used her <em>lightning amulet</em> to blast through the cloud giantess's body again, being sure to reform her elven body while still on the cloud island, for the island dropped away not too far beyond Zaralia's current position. That side of the building was covered in deep shadow, the sun still far to the east at this time of morning.</p><p></p><p>"Arrgh!" complained Zaralia as the lightning-form of Finoula passed through her. "And here I was going to let you be on my team!" She punched the ranger hard with both fists, nearly sending Finoula sprawling. But despite the giantess's words and actions, Finoula soon found herself on "Zaralia's team" after all, as her mind suddenly flashed with how much fun it would be to cut her friends up to ribbons with her sword. She might not be able to pull an arm out of a socket with her sheer strength like the female giant had done, but she knew <em>Tahlmalaera</em> could easily do the trick. Finoula wondered what Binkadink's reaction would be to being slapped with his own hand on the end of his severed arm, and started giggling to herself.</p><p></p><p>Hagan did a quick analysis of the terrain and determined he could cast a <em>fireball</em> spell such that it would only catch the cloud giantess in its blast radius. He let fly with the spell and Zaralia cried out in pain. Behind him, he could hear Gilbert casting a <em>stoneskin</em> spell upon himself as Castillan and Darrien both put their respective bows to good use against Zaralia.</p><p></p><p>Then Finoula stepped up behind the giantess, uncurling her <em>flaming whip of thorns</em> as she did so. Castillan was surprised she was using her whip when her longsword was already at hand and she was standing so close to the giantess; he was even more surprised when the whip came flashing at him, snapping him in the face, the arm, and the neck in quick succession. The bounder staggered back, barely able to keep himself standing after the unexpected assault. Deeming it safer to be elsewhere, he activated his magic ring and <em>dimension doored</em> over by the giant apple trees, away from the current battle. As he pulled a much-needed healing potion from his belt, he noticed a bunch of gigantic grapevines curling around a wooden fence along one edge of the cloud island, between the trees and the dwelling of cloudstuff.</p><p></p><p>"Fight it, Finoula!" Darrien called, knowing full well this sudden betrayal had to be caused by some outside source - possibly whatever was causing this cloud giantess to act so crazily as well. He fired an arrow into Finoula, but was careful to target her shoulder; he wanted to incapacitate her, not kill her.</p><p></p><p>With Finoula standing so close to the giantess, Hagan didn't dare use any of his blasting spells with a large radius; he'd surely catch Finoula with a <em>cone of cold</em> or a <em>fireball</em> or a <em>lightning bolt</em>.... "Ah, what the heck?" the sorcerer asked himself and cast a <em>magic missile</em> at Zaralia, surprised when his spell toppled the female giant onto her face, dead - but still with a crazed smile on her lips. Gilbert followed suit with the same spell, this one targeting Finoula, and the ranger also fell to the ground, unconscious but bleeding out from her shoulder wound.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink climbed up out of the pit, his head seeming to emerge from the solid-looking ground of cloudstuff. He saw Finoula lying unconscious on the ground and the giantess at her side, out of the fight, and pulled a healing potion from his belt. Before the others could stop him - for, stuck in the pit, he had missed out on Finoula attacking their friends - he poured its contents down her throat.</p><p></p><p>The healing energy of the potion took its effect, and Finoula fluttered her eyelids as she gained consciousness and sat up. At the same time, a voice that sounded exactly like hers - but was the effect of a <em>magic mouth</em> spell tied into the potion by Jinkadoodle as a prank - cried out, "I'm hungry! Anybody got any boogers?" Finoula started giggling again, and Binkadink assumed it was at the ridiculousness of the potion's side effect, missing the evil gleam in the ranger's eyes as she reached for <em>Tahlmalaera</em> at her side.</p><p></p><p>But Ingebold didn't miss it. She cast a <em>magic circle against evil</em> spell upon herself and ran forward to catch her Battle-Sister within its area of effect. Right before she did so, an evil gleam entered the gnome fighter's eyes as his mind suddenly rushed with the thought of skinning his friends alive with his glaive - how funny they'd look! And then Ingebold's spell covered the two of them, and they were no longer <em>dominated</em> by the unseen force taking over their wills.</p><p></p><p>Shaking their heads as they snapped out of it, Binkadink and Finoula suddenly noticed just how dark the shadows on the side of the cloud building were. Hagan, in the meantime, assumed the battle was over and decided to check out the giantess's dwelling. He noted the door had two handles, one at a good height for a human and the other scaled better for a giant; upon closer examination, the setup was actually a door within a door. Opening the smaller of the doors, he stepped inside the dwelling. Just to the right was a human-sized kitchen area - complete with a metal pan of tea boiling over in a fireplace in the corner - while to the left was another human-sized door; likely the two human servants' bedroom. The back half of the room was scaled more for Zaralia, with a giant-sized sofa and enormous bookcases holding books as large as a man. There was a short staircase in the back of the room leading up to an offset second floor, but the stairs would be difficult for a human to manage without actual climbing.</p><p></p><p>"Ye'd best stay by me fer th' duration," advised Ingebold to Finoula and Binkadink. Darrien stepped forward and activated a sunrod, tossing it into the shadowy darkness - where it was instantly extinguished. "It's a <em>deeper darkness</em> spell," Binkadink observed.</p><p></p><p>And then, stepping out from the inky darkness came a creature unlike any the heroes had ever seen before. It was a hunched-over beast of basic humanoid build, but with what looked to be skeletal vertebrae growing on the outside of its yellowy-brown hide, all along its spine and continuing on like a crown over its misshapen head. Gilbert, who had studied extensively the creatures of the lower planes, identified it mentally as a cerebrilith, one of the fiends inhabiting the infinite layers of the Abyss. "It a demon!" he warned.</p><p></p><p>As the mage's words left his lips, the demon struck out at Finoula with a clawed hand, ripping a line of gashes across her torso. Binkadink struck out at it with his glaive, causing it to drip a foul ichor in place of blood. Almost ignoring its wound, it bit down at the elven ranger, catching her arm between its yellowy teeth.</p><p></p><p>Castillan, healed up enough for battle (by a potion Jinkadoodle <em>hadn't</em> fiddled with), used his ring to <em>dimension door</em> directly behind the demon, stabbing out with his short sword as he did so. He caught the thing by surprise, driving his blade in deep before it could react to his sudden presence. Finoula, meanwhile, activated one of the powers of her <em>angel helm</em> and channeled a <em>dispel evil</em> spell through <em>Tahlmalaera</em> and into the demon as the blade struck true. She could feel the spell's effect break through the cerebrilith's normal defenses, but at the last moment it was able to shrug off the effects.</p><p></p><p>Darrien sent several arrows flying at the cerebrilith, hitting with shaft after shaft. The creature snarled in pain - but then Binkadink finished it off with a powerful downward blow from his glaive, with all of his not-inconsiderable power behind it. The demon crumpled to the ground and died on the spot. Gilbert noted its body didn't disappear upon its death, which meant it hadn't just been temporarily summoned here to this plane, but rather gated in somehow.</p><p></p><p>"It's safe now" Binkadink called over to the privy pit, and made the introductions once Tanabelle climbed up and out. She led them inside the dwelling, to show them the magic circle Zaralia used to talk to other beings from faraway planes. Stepping inside, though, she immediately dealt with the boiling pan of tea that she and Junia had put on the fire before all of the excitement of the morning. "The circle's upstairs," she told the heroes, pointing to the back of the room.</p><p></p><p>The second floor had an enormous bed on the left, a giant-sized desk and chair on the right, and a magic tub in the back, with an oval window just behind it to allow the bathers to observe the sunrise or sunset from their relaxing bath. While Finoula looked longingly at the tub, Castillan started checking out the drawers of the desk, while Gilbert examined the permanent magic circle carved into the floor. There was a book lying across the circle - no doubt how the cerebrilith escaped the circle's confines after it arrived - and, flipping through it, Gilbert read a ritual that purported to bridge the planes to an "outer planes scholar" named <strong>Brumathion</strong>. Gilbert had no doubt the tale in the book was completely false, and had been planted in the volume as a means for the cerebrilith to be gated onto the mortal plane by gullible types like Zaralia.</p><p></p><p>Castillan, in the meantime, had found a closed wooden chest in one of the desk drawers. After determining to his satisfaction that it wasn't booby-trapped in any way, he opened it up and found an overly-large chime, similar to the <em>chimes of opening</em> both he and Ingebold owned. There were runes carved on the chime, and they were different than the ones on his and Ingebold's chimes; Gilbert identified them as being associated with the abjuration school of magic.</p><p></p><p>"So what kind of chime are we talking about here?" asked the bounder.</p><p></p><p>"Not sure, but you don't activate it until we figure it out," commanded Gilbert. Castillan closed the chest with a shrug.</p><p></p><p>Gilbert then started downloading the contents of Zaralia's library - even the books downstairs as tall as he was - into his <em>Omnibook</em>. He was well underway when an extraordinarily-large bottle of wine floated through the air before dropping at the foot of the stairs leading up to the second floor. Castillan felt the presence of a living body nearby although he couldn't see anybody there; he cast his hands in the area and felt them brush up against something. Jolting back as if he'd been shocked, he let out a gasp of surprise. Darrien heard it and sent an arrow flying at the spot directly in front of the bounder, changing it into a line of sticky spider silk before it hit. Unfortunately, all it hit was the wall, for if there was anything there the archer had missed with his line.</p><p></p><p>However, Tanabelle looked over at the commotion, saw the giant bottle of wine on the floor, and called out, "No! Stop! They're friends!" She then explained it was an invisible stalker Zaralia used to trade with other cloud giant colonies, exchanging grapes from her vines outside for the occasional bottle of wine.</p><p></p><p>"Zaralia was a good mistress?" asked Finoula.</p><p></p><p>"Oh, yes," sighed Tanabelle. "She was always so kind to Junia and I...well, up until today."</p><p></p><p>Finoula and her Battle-Sister exchanged looks. "I've not th' spell readied t'day," the dwarf admitted, "But I c'n have a <em>raise dead</em> spell ready t'go in th' mornin'."</p><p></p><p>"We'll have Zaralia back alive by tomorrow," Finoula promised Tanabelle.</p><p></p><p>"Oh! You can--? And Junia?"</p><p></p><p>At that, Ingebold's face fell. "I'm afraid...without an intact body..." she began.</p><p></p><p>"I understand," Tanabelle replied.</p><p></p><p>She showed the heroes the rest of the structure; the third and final floor housed Zaralia's telescope, with which she observed the stars at night. And she explained the magical chime: it was an <em>alarm</em> spell that, when activated, alerted a cloud dragon named <strong>Gozragoth</strong> who laired in the bottom part of the cloud. "It's a good thing you didn't activate it," observed Tanabelle. "If you had, Gozragoth would have come flying up to see what was the matter, and seeing Zaralia dead, he'd have undoubtedly come to the wrong conclusion, just like the invisible stalker did."</p><p></p><p>Tanabelle also explained the presence of the arrowhawks in the apple trees. "One of the smaller ones was named <strong>Caela</strong>," the servant said. "She was Zaralia's familiar. The others didn't bother us, or Gozragoth, but they were an extra layer of defense against intruders...not that we get many of those, up here."</p><p></p><p>Having done all they could for the moment, the heroes explained they were going to fly Hagan to see his parents, but promised to return to the cloud island immediately thereafter. Gilbert Fung, Ingebold, and Finoula remained behind with Tanabelle, so she wouldn't be alone with the corpse of her dead mistress. (Gilbert's first action was to cast a <em>gentle repose</em> spell on Zaralia.) The dragonfly vessel returned after a little over an hour, and the heroes slept in their ship, which was parked on the far end of the cloud. "And that gives me an idea..." began Jinkadoodle.</p><p></p><p>The next morning, Ingebold carried through with her promise and cast a <em>raise dead</em> spell on Zaralia. The blue-skinned giantess sat up, blinking in confusion, and then gasped in horror as she recalled what she'd done to Junia, her faithful servant. Finoula had also been under the cerebrilith's <em>domination</em> for a while, and remembered every moment of it. <em>How much worse,</em> she thought, <em>must it be for Zaralia?</em></p><p></p><p>Zaralia was grateful for her return to life, but equally glad the heroes had put her down before she could harm Tanabelle. She used the chime to summon Gozragoth - which caused the heroes no small amount of concern - but it was merely to arrange for the purchase of a few of the items from his hoard. "He'll never part with a single copper piece of actual money," Zaralia explained, "but he doesn't mind selling off the things he can't use." Gilbert was given a <em>ring of arcane supremacy</em> which made it easier for his spells to have their desired effect upon magic-resistant foes; Darrien was given an extradimensional quiver which could house sixty individual arrows as well as javelins and bows; and Ingebold was given a medallion which allowed her to mentally communicate with one person from up to a mile away. "It's not enough to repay the debt I owe you all," Zaralia apologized.</p><p></p><p>"Actually..." began Jinkadoodle, and laid out his proposal.</p><p></p><p>Zaralia agreed instantly, and the heroes gained a parking spot for their dragonfly vessel, one where they need not worry about other spelljammers finding it parked in orbit, and one which came equipped with a cloud giant and cloud dragon on permanent guard duty.</p><p></p><p>The heroes waved their goodbyes to Zaralia and Tanabelle, stepped into the dragonfly ship, and went through the hidden lower level to the arcane runes that allowed them to teleport directly back to Battershield Keep.</p><p></p><p>"Ah, ye're here," said Aerik Battershield upon their arrival. "Ye've a guest in th' conference room. She's been waitin' fer yer return...."</p><p></p><p>"I dinnae trust 'er," sniffed Helga Battershield. "But ye c'n see fer yerselves."</p><p></p><p>"I think we better," agreed Gilbert Fung, leading the way to the conference room and shortly thereafter meeting up with a guest none of the heroes would have ever suspected would come to call upon them.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>A couple of things worth mentioning: Hagan wishing to visit his parents was an in-game explanation for his upcoming absence from the next adventure, which was written before Harry joined our gaming group and is definitely not appropriate for a 10-year-old boy. (Or even for an 11-year-old, which is what he miraculously transformed into last week.) Harry's okay with missing the adventure once we explained it had really scary monsters in it that might give him nightmares; he routinely skips episodes of "Face Off" (a special effects makeup contest he otherwise enjoys) if the subject matter is going to be too scary that week. And I've explained Hagan will be having an unseen, off-screen adventure with his parents so he won't miss out on any XP that the other PCs will be accumulating during his absence. And fortunately, that's the only non-age-appropriate adventure I have in stock; all the ones after that were written with the knowledge that Harry would now be gaming with us.</p><p></p><p>Also, the arrowhawks being variants was a sudden change I made after I had messed up and forgotten they were immune to electrical attacks before allowing Hagan's <em>chain lightning </em> attack to kill off a bunch of them. Not wanting to "undo" Hagan's moment of glory, I simply altered their immunities and tail-ray attacks on the fly, as it were.</p><p></p><p>The best moment for me in this adventure was Zaralia tossing Junia off the island the round after Ingebold had healed her. I had known that was going to be Zaralia's next action before Logan (who was running Ingebold this time around) declared she'd be casting <em>heal</em> at range on Junia; I knew I was going to get some surprised looks on the players' faces, but I had underestimated the level of surprise I received: the table erupted with shouts of astonishment and dismay. It made my evil little DM's heart swell with glee.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>T-Shirt Worn: My black T-shirt with the caption: "Chaotic Evil means never having to say you're sorry" - it seemed appropriate since the cerebrilith was a chaotic evil demon.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 7305029, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 40: CLOUD CUCKOOLAND[/b] PC Roster: [INDENT]Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 12 Castillan Ivenheart, elf bounder 12 Darrien, half-elf ranger 12 Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 12 Gilbert Fung, human wizard 12 Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 12[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Ingebold Battershield, dwarven cleric 12 (Moradin) Jinkadoodle Dundernoggin, gnome illusionist 5[/INDENT] Game Session Date: 16 December 2017 - - - "So," asked Jinkadoodle, "what do you think?" "Hmm," said Gilbert, frowning. "It will really stay up here by itself, with nobody controlling it?" asked Finoula. "Absolutely," replied the gnome illusionist, getting up from the dragonfly ship's helm and standing at its side. "As of right now, nobody's piloting the ship, and it isn't falling back down to the planet below. It's called a 'geosynchronous orbit,' whatever that is. Melony Sal didn't really explain all of the terms she used in her notes, but she obviously knew her stuff." "Hmm," repeated Gilbert Fung. "So we can just park the ship out here in wildspace above the planet and return to Battershield Keep using the [i]teleport runes[/i] downstairs?" asked Hagan. "Exactly. As long as we keep the [i]teleport carpet[/i] unrolled and in place at Battershield Keep, we can pop down or up as needed." "And nobody will mess with it up here?" asked Darrien. "Who's to mess with it?" asked the illusionist. "According to your spelljamming friends, our world is well off the beaten track and away from the major trade routes. There shouldn't be a bunch of other spelljamming vessels flitting about the place, wondering what's up with this dragonfly ship in geosynchronous orbit." "There were those grell," pointed out Ingebold. "Yeah, but you said they flew around in a giant jellyfish. What would they want with a ship like this, that they couldn't even use? You need to be able to sit at the helm to control this vessel, and sitting's one thing a grell can't do." "Aye, good point." "Hmm," Gilbert added again, deep in thought. "And it'll save us the cost of building a hangar by the keep, and it will prevent anyone from seeing the ship flying around near Kordovia and coming to investigate it. And anytime we need to use it, it's just a step on the carpet away." "Sounds good," observed Binkadink, somewhat proud of his cousin's plan. "Makes sense to me," added Castillan. "Hmm," repeated Gilbert for a final time. "Okay, make sense. We do it." "Great!" replied Jinkadoodle, taking his place back at the helm. "So where to now? Taking Hagan back to his parents?" The half-orc had stated a desire to visit his parents, who lived over at the far eastern edge of the vast Vesve Forest; everybody had come along because Jinkadoodle had wanted to demonstrate his brilliant new idea for parking the vessel in orbit. "If you please," replied the half-orc sorcerer. Wezhley, his weasel familiar, bounced up and down on his master's shoulder in excitement - he liked Hagan's human mother, who always fed him tasty treats when they visited. "Off we go!" replied the gnome pilot, bringing the dragonfly vessel down out of its geosynchronous orbit and back into the upper atmosphere, chattering about his plans for the future. "I think I'm going to circumnavigate the globe, making maps of the land masses as I go," he said. "I may even bring Zalian along, for his expertise." Zalian Darisath was the castle historian and keeper of the kingdom's collection of maps; Jinkadoodle couldn't wait to see the elf's expression when he first got to see entire continents laid out before him! But the pilot found himself talking mostly to Gilbert, who seemed only half-interested; the others had scattered about the ship, most of them heading up to the upper deck, if nothing else than for the excellent view. They knew from previous experience that the upper atmosphere was ridiculously cold, but once they started dropping down to cloud level it was much more bearable. And then a scream rang out from somewhere nearby. This in itself was a bit unusual, given that the dragonfly vessel was still flying up among the clouds - there was nothing nearby to house the owner of the scream: no mountains, certainly no other flying vessels! But it was definitely a woman's scream, and Finoula's discerning elven ears classified it as having been composed of equal parts pain and terror. Those on the upper deck scattered to the rails on either side of the ship and looked about; below, Ingebold and Gilbert peered through the bubble-windows that comprised the dragonfly's "eyes" - for Jinkadoodle, sitting at the ship's helm, had his senses expanded to all around the ship, and thus heard the scream outside from his position on the vessel's bridge, and had alerted the others. "There! To the left!" called Finoula. They'd spent months out in wildspace aboard various spelljamming vessels, but they had never bothered picking up nautical terminology; "left" was still "left" to them, not "port." Jinkadoodle steered the ship to the left, where a patch of green added a surprising splash of color to the white cloudscape. As they approached closer, they could see a cloud island, flat along the top and dropping down to a triangular shape below, with two enormous trees sprouting in the middle of the upper surface. At one end of the island stood a tall structure seemingly shaped of cloud-stuff, with a metallic projection sticking out of the roof at an angle. The other side of the trees looked relatively flat and empty. "I'm going to try to land her!" Jinkadoodle called. "Will it support our weight?" asked Ingebold, worried. "It's supporting the weight of those massive trees!" countered the gnome pilot. And they were indeed massive, each easily three or four times the size of a normal apple tree as one might find on the ground below. As Jinkadoodle brought the vessel to a safe landing along the outer strip, the screams continued - they seemed to be coming from over by the cloud-building. Castillan was the nearest to the ladder on the upper deck; he flipped it over the side and was climbing down the rungs almost as they unfurled. He spotted movement in the canopies of the trees, but it could have only been the wind. Still, he kept his senses sharp as he disembarked and took a tentative step onto the ground of the cloud island. Over by the trees the cloud had been covered in topsoil from the planet below; over here, it was pure white, fluffy cloud - a distinctly unusual feeling to be stepping upon a substance that normally couldn't hold any weight at all. The bounder's ears could hear the screaming, coming in fits and bursts, but also the sound of another, deeper, feminine voice, this one demanding, "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?" Hagan was the next to disembark from the ship, his weasel perched on his shoulder as normal. Like the bounder before him, the sorcerer looked up at the trees overhead, having detected movement there as well. The half-orc's darkvision allowed him to pick up a shape hidden in the shadows of the branches: a creature with an avian build, but lacking feet of any kind; instead, the beast seemed to have an extra set of wings. The thing was much larger than a man, and there seemed to be smaller versions of the strange beast hidden elsewhere throughout the two giant trees. "Bird-things in the trees!" Hagan called out, warning his friends of a potential source of danger. Up on the deck, Darrien raced to the front of the vessel rather than heading over to the ladder, as many of his friends were doing. He pulled out an arrow and nocked it in his [i]Arachnibow[/i], ready to let fly if the largest of the bird-things made a move in their direction. Gilbert had popped up from the lower deck by this time. (His earth elemental, Mudpie, had seen that they were about to go walking around on a cloud and immediately headed back for the lower deck, where there were walls all around and he could pretend he wasn't suspended up in the sky.) The wizard spotted the bird-thing in the trees and immediately identified it. "That an arrowhawk!" he cried. "What it doing here? It belong on Elemental Plane of Air!" "Maybe it took a wrong turn," suggested Binkadink, readying his glaive for action just as the elder arrowhawk flapped its four wings and sprang from the tree. It made a bee-line for Darrien, who plunked an arrow deep into its chest before its serrated beak clamped down over the archer's shoulder. Binkadink raced over on his extended [i]gnomish stilt-boots[/i] and stabbed at the beast with his magical glaive, causing it to release Darrien from its beak. It squawked noisily in pain and outrage, its cries mingling with the screams of pain from the unseen woman somewhere ahead. Seeing that Binkadink and Darrien seemed to have the beast under control, Ingebold scrambled down the ship's ladder. She was a healer, and the screaming woman sounded like she was dying! Right behind her came her Battle-Sister, Finoula, casting a [i]barkskin[/i] spell upon herself as she pulled [i]Tahlmalaera[/i] from its scabbard. Down on the ground, Castillan found himself the target of two of the man-sized arrowhawks, one striking from either side. He did his best to avoid their attacks, but one of them clamped onto his upper arm with its beak, drawing blood through the bounder's leather armor. He wriggled from its grasp and fell back towards the ship, snapping his fingers and bringing forth his shortbow as he did so. He got a shot off at the one who had bitten him, catching it at the point where one of its four wings met its body. Behind him, Hagan cast a [i]chain lightning[/i] spell, targeting one of the man-sized arrowhawks he'd spotted in the other tree as his primary foe, and sending arcs of electricity from that one to a good half-dozen of its neighbors. "That not going to work!" called Gilbert from behind the sorcerer. "They immune to electricity!" "Now you tell me!" complained the sorcerer. "Looks like nobody told them!" pointed out Castillan. Indeed, Hagan's spell had fried at least two of the man-sized arrowhawks and a few even smaller ones - presumably the young of the nest. They fell from the trees like rain, their blackened bodies devoid of life. "Hmm," mused Gilbert. "They must be slightly different species or something." Up on deck, Darrien pumped arrow after arrow into the elder arrowhawk. It retaliated by biting the half-elf ranger, but then opted to fly laterally (Binkadink had gotten in a good hit with his glaive as it flew away), off to the side of the vessel. It then proved Gilbert's point by arching its nimble tail beneath its body and blasting Darrien with an attack of force energy, similar to that used in the common wizard's [i]magic missile[/i] spell. As Gilbert well knew, normal arrowhawks shot electrical rays and were immune to electricity; these variants definitely lacked the electrical immunity and had evolved a different offensive capability. But Gilbert was down on the ground by the ship, dealing with the arrowhawks in and near the trees. He cast a [i]solid fog[/i] spell that encompassed the better part of both trees, imprisoning those arrowhawks still among the giant branches. He couldn't help but notice the size of the apples growing from the trees - they were each the size of a terrestrial pumpkin! Two arrowhawks had been outside the range of the portly wizard's spell and one flew over to attack Finoula. The ranger cut it down with her longsword without breaking her stride. Castillan, meanwhile, decided he liked it better back up on the ship and started climbing the ladder, all the while being attacked by the second of the arrowhawks he'd been fighting. He, too, got to experience the blast of a tail ray as he climbed back up on board. But the arrowhawk, focused on the bounder, failed to notice he was now within range of Binkadink's glaive, and that oversight proved to be fatal to the four-winged creature. Inside both tree canopies, additional arrowhawks of different sizes struggled through the [i]solid fog[/i] to reach the freedom of the open air. Not being able to see through the magical fog to target the arrowhawks with another [i]chain lightning[/i] spell, Hagan made do with a [i]fireball[/i] engulfing several that had finally found the freedom of the skies. They fell to the ground beside the trees, burned to a crisp. Gilbert eventually dispelled his [i]solid fog[/i] spell, reasoning there couldn't be many more arrowhawks imprisoned within and noticing it was blocking the ground passageway between the trees that would allow the heroes to advance to where the screams were emanating. He was right about the arrowhawks; by this point there were only two still among the branches. But one of them was another elder arrowhawk, and it flapped over to the other side of the ship and blasted Castillan, just as its counterpart blasted Darrien. Castillan fired back with an arrow from his shortbow. From the ground below, Ingebold cast a [i]blindness/deafness[/i] spell on the one attacking Castillan, hoping to deprive the great beast of its sight, but the creature shrugged off the spell's effects. Darrien finally dropped the elder arrowhawk he'd been battling; it fell, its body covered in arrow-shafts, beyond the perimeter of the cloud island and to the ground far below. With a final squawk of outrage, the other elder arrowhawk dropped its battle with Castillan and flapped away, opting to find another nest somewhere safe. The arrowhawks having been bested, the adventurers were now able to face the source of the screams. Binkadink found a faster way to the ground by leaping over the railing onto the front of the ship, across the dragonfly's head (he could see his cousin through the "eye" viewports, still at his station at the ship's helm, ready to depart at a moment's notice), and jumping to the ground from there. Once past the giant apple trees and the arrowhawk corpses littered throughout the area, the heroes could see the unsettling tableau just ahead. A human woman lay screaming on the ground, blood gushing from her right shoulder at the point where her arm had been ripped from her body. Standing above her was a blue-skinned cloud giantess, using the human arm in her hand as a club to beat the screaming woman. "Why are you hitting yourself?" the giantess repeated, giggling to herself at her joke. "Stop it, Mistress!" pleaded the prone woman in a voice lowering in volume as the life ebbed from her body. The giantess stood up, holding the severed arm up such that its fingers stroked her own chin, and muttered, "Hmm, should I?" as if lost in thought. Ingebold realized getting to her patient would be difficult with the cloud giantess there standing above her; she also realized she didn't need to actually get to her patient to heal her. Using her [i]light mace of ranged healing[/i], she channeled a [i]heal[/i] spell through it to strike the prone woman. The ray of healing energy struck true, sealing up the wounded shoulder and restoring full vitality to the stricken woman. This did not go unnoticed by the cloud giantess. Still holding the woman's severed arm in her right hand, she bent over and picked her up by the neck with her left hand. "You're all better, [b]Junia[/b]!" she exclaimed. "Well, we can't have that, now, can we, silly?" With a grunt of effort, she flung the woman far to the left, where she plummeted off the side of the narrow cloud island and went plunging through the wispy clouds to her death, far below. There was nothing any of the heroes could do to save her, and they stared at the giggling giantess in shock. Finoula was the first to react. Touching a hand to her amulet, she transformed her body into a blast of living lightning and attacked the giggling giantess, reforming into her elven body on the other side, by the wooden door to the cloud structure. The giantess staggered under the attack but didn't stop her infernal laughter, even as she spun on her heel and punched the ranger for her effrontery with a blow than nearly broke bones. Castillan raced up, shooting the giggling menace with his shortbow; an arrow to the gut didn't make her stop laughing, merely use the severed arm to wave hello to her attackers. She did take several steps to her right, away from Finoula. Binkadink charged right at the cloud giantess and discovered - too late - that the lack of seriousness in the blue-skinned giantess's demeanor did not mean she wasn't paying proper attention to the battle at hand; instead, she'd maneuvered herself so the charging gnome fighter would fall directly into the unseen pit she now stood behind. Finoula gasped in horror as she saw the little gnome plunge through the seemingly-solid floor of cloudstuff, wincing at his scream of surprise. But unlike poor Junia, whose continuing screams were audible as she fell to her death below, Binkadink's was short in duration. "I'm okay!" he called up from the pit, which fortunately had a solid bottom some ten feet or so down below the surface. "Are you truly all right?" asked a feminine voice beside the gnome. He looked over and saw he was in the interior of a hollow cube some ten feet to a side; the "ceiling" was covered over by wispy cloud material no more solid than that of any other cloud, whereas the floor and walls of the interior were made of the same, solid cloud-stuff that made up the bulk of the floating island. And there, hovering with concern over him, was a human woman. "My name is [b]Tanabelle[/b], she said. "Binkadink," said the gnome by way of introduction. "What's going on?" "My mistress, [b]Zaralia[/b], went crazy this morning. She tried out a summoning ritual, to contact a scholar of the outer planes. Something must have gone wrong - when she came back downstairs, she was insane, and attacked Junia! I was here, in the privy--" "This is a [i]privy[/i]?" Binkadink interrupted, looking about him in sudden concern. But the walls and floor were an unblemished white. "Yes, the wastes are absorbed by the cloud and filtered away," Tanabelle explained, irritated by the gnome's apparent interest in the cloud's toilet facilities being higher than his interest in the situation at hand. "I was here when she first attacked, so I stayed hidden. Is Junia...?" "Dead," replied Binkadink, with no thought of breaking the news gently. Tanabelle covered her face in her hands and began to cry. But the gnome had other, more pressing things on his mind, like making sure nobody else fell into this pit - this [i]privy![/i] Channeling magical energy from his gnomish heritage, he cast [i]dancing lights[/i] such that one appeared at the top of each corner of the pit, marking off its boundaries; the gnome could see their glow through the wispy cloudstuff covering the pit's opening. "Stay here!" he commanded Tanabelle and started climbing up out of the pit, after having noticed a giant-sized ladder carved in the western side of the pit and a human-sized ladder carved in the eastern side. Darrien, meanwhile, had shot Zaralia with a few arrows as he cautiously approached. Finoula used her [i]lightning amulet[/i] to blast through the cloud giantess's body again, being sure to reform her elven body while still on the cloud island, for the island dropped away not too far beyond Zaralia's current position. That side of the building was covered in deep shadow, the sun still far to the east at this time of morning. "Arrgh!" complained Zaralia as the lightning-form of Finoula passed through her. "And here I was going to let you be on my team!" She punched the ranger hard with both fists, nearly sending Finoula sprawling. But despite the giantess's words and actions, Finoula soon found herself on "Zaralia's team" after all, as her mind suddenly flashed with how much fun it would be to cut her friends up to ribbons with her sword. She might not be able to pull an arm out of a socket with her sheer strength like the female giant had done, but she knew [i]Tahlmalaera[/i] could easily do the trick. Finoula wondered what Binkadink's reaction would be to being slapped with his own hand on the end of his severed arm, and started giggling to herself. Hagan did a quick analysis of the terrain and determined he could cast a [i]fireball[/i] spell such that it would only catch the cloud giantess in its blast radius. He let fly with the spell and Zaralia cried out in pain. Behind him, he could hear Gilbert casting a [i]stoneskin[/i] spell upon himself as Castillan and Darrien both put their respective bows to good use against Zaralia. Then Finoula stepped up behind the giantess, uncurling her [i]flaming whip of thorns[/i] as she did so. Castillan was surprised she was using her whip when her longsword was already at hand and she was standing so close to the giantess; he was even more surprised when the whip came flashing at him, snapping him in the face, the arm, and the neck in quick succession. The bounder staggered back, barely able to keep himself standing after the unexpected assault. Deeming it safer to be elsewhere, he activated his magic ring and [i]dimension doored[/i] over by the giant apple trees, away from the current battle. As he pulled a much-needed healing potion from his belt, he noticed a bunch of gigantic grapevines curling around a wooden fence along one edge of the cloud island, between the trees and the dwelling of cloudstuff. "Fight it, Finoula!" Darrien called, knowing full well this sudden betrayal had to be caused by some outside source - possibly whatever was causing this cloud giantess to act so crazily as well. He fired an arrow into Finoula, but was careful to target her shoulder; he wanted to incapacitate her, not kill her. With Finoula standing so close to the giantess, Hagan didn't dare use any of his blasting spells with a large radius; he'd surely catch Finoula with a [i]cone of cold[/i] or a [i]fireball[/i] or a [i]lightning bolt[/i].... "Ah, what the heck?" the sorcerer asked himself and cast a [i]magic missile[/i] at Zaralia, surprised when his spell toppled the female giant onto her face, dead - but still with a crazed smile on her lips. Gilbert followed suit with the same spell, this one targeting Finoula, and the ranger also fell to the ground, unconscious but bleeding out from her shoulder wound. Binkadink climbed up out of the pit, his head seeming to emerge from the solid-looking ground of cloudstuff. He saw Finoula lying unconscious on the ground and the giantess at her side, out of the fight, and pulled a healing potion from his belt. Before the others could stop him - for, stuck in the pit, he had missed out on Finoula attacking their friends - he poured its contents down her throat. The healing energy of the potion took its effect, and Finoula fluttered her eyelids as she gained consciousness and sat up. At the same time, a voice that sounded exactly like hers - but was the effect of a [i]magic mouth[/i] spell tied into the potion by Jinkadoodle as a prank - cried out, "I'm hungry! Anybody got any boogers?" Finoula started giggling again, and Binkadink assumed it was at the ridiculousness of the potion's side effect, missing the evil gleam in the ranger's eyes as she reached for [i]Tahlmalaera[/i] at her side. But Ingebold didn't miss it. She cast a [i]magic circle against evil[/i] spell upon herself and ran forward to catch her Battle-Sister within its area of effect. Right before she did so, an evil gleam entered the gnome fighter's eyes as his mind suddenly rushed with the thought of skinning his friends alive with his glaive - how funny they'd look! And then Ingebold's spell covered the two of them, and they were no longer [i]dominated[/i] by the unseen force taking over their wills. Shaking their heads as they snapped out of it, Binkadink and Finoula suddenly noticed just how dark the shadows on the side of the cloud building were. Hagan, in the meantime, assumed the battle was over and decided to check out the giantess's dwelling. He noted the door had two handles, one at a good height for a human and the other scaled better for a giant; upon closer examination, the setup was actually a door within a door. Opening the smaller of the doors, he stepped inside the dwelling. Just to the right was a human-sized kitchen area - complete with a metal pan of tea boiling over in a fireplace in the corner - while to the left was another human-sized door; likely the two human servants' bedroom. The back half of the room was scaled more for Zaralia, with a giant-sized sofa and enormous bookcases holding books as large as a man. There was a short staircase in the back of the room leading up to an offset second floor, but the stairs would be difficult for a human to manage without actual climbing. "Ye'd best stay by me fer th' duration," advised Ingebold to Finoula and Binkadink. Darrien stepped forward and activated a sunrod, tossing it into the shadowy darkness - where it was instantly extinguished. "It's a [i]deeper darkness[/i] spell," Binkadink observed. And then, stepping out from the inky darkness came a creature unlike any the heroes had ever seen before. It was a hunched-over beast of basic humanoid build, but with what looked to be skeletal vertebrae growing on the outside of its yellowy-brown hide, all along its spine and continuing on like a crown over its misshapen head. Gilbert, who had studied extensively the creatures of the lower planes, identified it mentally as a cerebrilith, one of the fiends inhabiting the infinite layers of the Abyss. "It a demon!" he warned. As the mage's words left his lips, the demon struck out at Finoula with a clawed hand, ripping a line of gashes across her torso. Binkadink struck out at it with his glaive, causing it to drip a foul ichor in place of blood. Almost ignoring its wound, it bit down at the elven ranger, catching her arm between its yellowy teeth. Castillan, healed up enough for battle (by a potion Jinkadoodle [i]hadn't[/i] fiddled with), used his ring to [i]dimension door[/i] directly behind the demon, stabbing out with his short sword as he did so. He caught the thing by surprise, driving his blade in deep before it could react to his sudden presence. Finoula, meanwhile, activated one of the powers of her [i]angel helm[/i] and channeled a [i]dispel evil[/i] spell through [i]Tahlmalaera[/i] and into the demon as the blade struck true. She could feel the spell's effect break through the cerebrilith's normal defenses, but at the last moment it was able to shrug off the effects. Darrien sent several arrows flying at the cerebrilith, hitting with shaft after shaft. The creature snarled in pain - but then Binkadink finished it off with a powerful downward blow from his glaive, with all of his not-inconsiderable power behind it. The demon crumpled to the ground and died on the spot. Gilbert noted its body didn't disappear upon its death, which meant it hadn't just been temporarily summoned here to this plane, but rather gated in somehow. "It's safe now" Binkadink called over to the privy pit, and made the introductions once Tanabelle climbed up and out. She led them inside the dwelling, to show them the magic circle Zaralia used to talk to other beings from faraway planes. Stepping inside, though, she immediately dealt with the boiling pan of tea that she and Junia had put on the fire before all of the excitement of the morning. "The circle's upstairs," she told the heroes, pointing to the back of the room. The second floor had an enormous bed on the left, a giant-sized desk and chair on the right, and a magic tub in the back, with an oval window just behind it to allow the bathers to observe the sunrise or sunset from their relaxing bath. While Finoula looked longingly at the tub, Castillan started checking out the drawers of the desk, while Gilbert examined the permanent magic circle carved into the floor. There was a book lying across the circle - no doubt how the cerebrilith escaped the circle's confines after it arrived - and, flipping through it, Gilbert read a ritual that purported to bridge the planes to an "outer planes scholar" named [b]Brumathion[/b]. Gilbert had no doubt the tale in the book was completely false, and had been planted in the volume as a means for the cerebrilith to be gated onto the mortal plane by gullible types like Zaralia. Castillan, in the meantime, had found a closed wooden chest in one of the desk drawers. After determining to his satisfaction that it wasn't booby-trapped in any way, he opened it up and found an overly-large chime, similar to the [i]chimes of opening[/i] both he and Ingebold owned. There were runes carved on the chime, and they were different than the ones on his and Ingebold's chimes; Gilbert identified them as being associated with the abjuration school of magic. "So what kind of chime are we talking about here?" asked the bounder. "Not sure, but you don't activate it until we figure it out," commanded Gilbert. Castillan closed the chest with a shrug. Gilbert then started downloading the contents of Zaralia's library - even the books downstairs as tall as he was - into his [i]Omnibook[/i]. He was well underway when an extraordinarily-large bottle of wine floated through the air before dropping at the foot of the stairs leading up to the second floor. Castillan felt the presence of a living body nearby although he couldn't see anybody there; he cast his hands in the area and felt them brush up against something. Jolting back as if he'd been shocked, he let out a gasp of surprise. Darrien heard it and sent an arrow flying at the spot directly in front of the bounder, changing it into a line of sticky spider silk before it hit. Unfortunately, all it hit was the wall, for if there was anything there the archer had missed with his line. However, Tanabelle looked over at the commotion, saw the giant bottle of wine on the floor, and called out, "No! Stop! They're friends!" She then explained it was an invisible stalker Zaralia used to trade with other cloud giant colonies, exchanging grapes from her vines outside for the occasional bottle of wine. "Zaralia was a good mistress?" asked Finoula. "Oh, yes," sighed Tanabelle. "She was always so kind to Junia and I...well, up until today." Finoula and her Battle-Sister exchanged looks. "I've not th' spell readied t'day," the dwarf admitted, "But I c'n have a [i]raise dead[/i] spell ready t'go in th' mornin'." "We'll have Zaralia back alive by tomorrow," Finoula promised Tanabelle. "Oh! You can--? And Junia?" At that, Ingebold's face fell. "I'm afraid...without an intact body..." she began. "I understand," Tanabelle replied. She showed the heroes the rest of the structure; the third and final floor housed Zaralia's telescope, with which she observed the stars at night. And she explained the magical chime: it was an [i]alarm[/i] spell that, when activated, alerted a cloud dragon named [b]Gozragoth[/b] who laired in the bottom part of the cloud. "It's a good thing you didn't activate it," observed Tanabelle. "If you had, Gozragoth would have come flying up to see what was the matter, and seeing Zaralia dead, he'd have undoubtedly come to the wrong conclusion, just like the invisible stalker did." Tanabelle also explained the presence of the arrowhawks in the apple trees. "One of the smaller ones was named [b]Caela[/b]," the servant said. "She was Zaralia's familiar. The others didn't bother us, or Gozragoth, but they were an extra layer of defense against intruders...not that we get many of those, up here." Having done all they could for the moment, the heroes explained they were going to fly Hagan to see his parents, but promised to return to the cloud island immediately thereafter. Gilbert Fung, Ingebold, and Finoula remained behind with Tanabelle, so she wouldn't be alone with the corpse of her dead mistress. (Gilbert's first action was to cast a [i]gentle repose[/i] spell on Zaralia.) The dragonfly vessel returned after a little over an hour, and the heroes slept in their ship, which was parked on the far end of the cloud. "And that gives me an idea..." began Jinkadoodle. The next morning, Ingebold carried through with her promise and cast a [i]raise dead[/i] spell on Zaralia. The blue-skinned giantess sat up, blinking in confusion, and then gasped in horror as she recalled what she'd done to Junia, her faithful servant. Finoula had also been under the cerebrilith's [i]domination[/i] for a while, and remembered every moment of it. [i]How much worse,[/i] she thought, [i]must it be for Zaralia?[/i] Zaralia was grateful for her return to life, but equally glad the heroes had put her down before she could harm Tanabelle. She used the chime to summon Gozragoth - which caused the heroes no small amount of concern - but it was merely to arrange for the purchase of a few of the items from his hoard. "He'll never part with a single copper piece of actual money," Zaralia explained, "but he doesn't mind selling off the things he can't use." Gilbert was given a [i]ring of arcane supremacy[/i] which made it easier for his spells to have their desired effect upon magic-resistant foes; Darrien was given an extradimensional quiver which could house sixty individual arrows as well as javelins and bows; and Ingebold was given a medallion which allowed her to mentally communicate with one person from up to a mile away. "It's not enough to repay the debt I owe you all," Zaralia apologized. "Actually..." began Jinkadoodle, and laid out his proposal. Zaralia agreed instantly, and the heroes gained a parking spot for their dragonfly vessel, one where they need not worry about other spelljammers finding it parked in orbit, and one which came equipped with a cloud giant and cloud dragon on permanent guard duty. The heroes waved their goodbyes to Zaralia and Tanabelle, stepped into the dragonfly ship, and went through the hidden lower level to the arcane runes that allowed them to teleport directly back to Battershield Keep. "Ah, ye're here," said Aerik Battershield upon their arrival. "Ye've a guest in th' conference room. She's been waitin' fer yer return...." "I dinnae trust 'er," sniffed Helga Battershield. "But ye c'n see fer yerselves." "I think we better," agreed Gilbert Fung, leading the way to the conference room and shortly thereafter meeting up with a guest none of the heroes would have ever suspected would come to call upon them. - - - A couple of things worth mentioning: Hagan wishing to visit his parents was an in-game explanation for his upcoming absence from the next adventure, which was written before Harry joined our gaming group and is definitely not appropriate for a 10-year-old boy. (Or even for an 11-year-old, which is what he miraculously transformed into last week.) Harry's okay with missing the adventure once we explained it had really scary monsters in it that might give him nightmares; he routinely skips episodes of "Face Off" (a special effects makeup contest he otherwise enjoys) if the subject matter is going to be too scary that week. And I've explained Hagan will be having an unseen, off-screen adventure with his parents so he won't miss out on any XP that the other PCs will be accumulating during his absence. And fortunately, that's the only non-age-appropriate adventure I have in stock; all the ones after that were written with the knowledge that Harry would now be gaming with us. Also, the arrowhawks being variants was a sudden change I made after I had messed up and forgotten they were immune to electrical attacks before allowing Hagan's [i]chain lightning [/i] attack to kill off a bunch of them. Not wanting to "undo" Hagan's moment of glory, I simply altered their immunities and tail-ray attacks on the fly, as it were. The best moment for me in this adventure was Zaralia tossing Junia off the island the round after Ingebold had healed her. I had known that was going to be Zaralia's next action before Logan (who was running Ingebold this time around) declared she'd be casting [i]heal[/i] at range on Junia; I knew I was going to get some surprised looks on the players' faces, but I had underestimated the level of surprise I received: the table erupted with shouts of astonishment and dismay. It made my evil little DM's heart swell with glee. - - - T-Shirt Worn: My black T-shirt with the caption: "Chaotic Evil means never having to say you're sorry" - it seemed appropriate since the cerebrilith was a chaotic evil demon. [/QUOTE]
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