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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy" data-source="post: 9776968" data-attributes="member: 4036"><h3>4/23/22</h3>For a few days on the road between Honeywood and Yvril Grath has been consumed with absorbing every tenet and revelation of the tome Alexander Lazandrias had gifted him.  Physical and mental exhaustion war with his formiddable will as he refuses food and rest instead gorging himself on ancient wisdoms all through the night and day.  He powers through the first night with an almost fond remembrance of his studies in Sun's Grace, but making it through the second night is a constant battle to hold focus and comprehension.He can’t stop turning the pages; the tome consumes him as his friends grow more and more consumed.  As the remaining pages dwindle, Grath spends almost as time flipping back pages trying to remember what he just read as he does making faltering progress to the very end.  Grath is holding the book in his lap in the back of the cart when his shoulders slump and he closes the tome solemnly.  He hands the book back to Rho to put in the bag of holding not even noticing Gribitz with Stick lowered at him.  Grath's eyes close in quiet contemplation of what he has read with only a lot of snoring.The next day a strange object streaks through the sky and crashes into the ground into the road in a wreckage.  A gearmonkey goblin climbs out of the wreckage coughing up smoke before immediately scrambling off into the woods without even looking around.  After a completely shocked and stunned lack of comprehension, the party investigates the barrel-like wreckage of some sort of construct with crudely constructed wings seemingly nailed onto the side of it.  It had some kind of rotating blades attached to the front of it, and gears and ropes inside. Gribitz dives into the contraption and tears through it looking for whatever terrible concoction the goblin consumed to invent or climb into such a contraption.  One particular golden gear wrapped up in cloth draws his attention almost as much as some berries that are not completely spoiled.Gribitz wonders if the gold makes it fly better because all the other gears are a rusted mess of iron and bronze.  At least for a moment before he unceremoniously chucks it over his shoulder.  It actually flies on its own at high speed and thunks solidly into a tree that it embeds itself in.  Grath sighs and tracks it down, he finds it gives off magic of Abjuration.When Grath returns to the wreckage he finds Rho and Veldra cautiously keeping watch as Gribitz is pulling every lever, turning every dial, and pressing every button he can find.  The contraption is quite inoperable though some lurching sounds and crashes make the others sweat.  Rho suggests tracking down the former resident of the crashed thing.  Everyone can see the obvious trail the pilot has left as it is littered with screws, bolts, tools, and broken bits.The party tracks the strange goblin to a small a clearing that has a wild ramshackle hut.  The shack is very oddly modified similar to the plane and is emitting various goblin profanities and sounds of work.  Gribitz tries to just walk in but Grath grabs him and stops him, lecturing Gribitz on manners.  Grath instead knocks, but receives nothing in return other than more curses in goblintongue from within and without.  Gribitz shouts out his claim to all recovered wreckage in the area which immediatley halts all activity inside and results in the strange goblin bursting out of the shack to babble and gesture angrily at the party.Gribitz ignores this and sneaks into the shack in the chaos.  While Grath assures the goblin that Gribitz meant nothing by his claim, Gribitz picks through the goblin's workshop and finds a great number of odd tools as well as three more golden gears.  When Gribitz starts inexpertly assembling the gears together the goblin outside rushes back in and tries to snatch them away.  Gribitz is convinced he is doing it right and the two goblins struggle over the bits until Gribitz breaks one.  Grath replaces it with the working gear from the wreckage trying to calm the situation.The goblin demands the party bring him more gears, but Gribitz asks where he got the last one.  The goblin reports that he found a pile of magical tools and gears that made him smart which Gribitz finds hilarious.  Whether he is doubled over laughing at the thought of this particular goblin being smart or any of goblinkind being smart is hard to say.  The goblin engineer just stomps and points imperiously at the door.  Grath tries to ask for some directions to where the cache was found but the goblin gives no intelligible directions or clues.As they walk Grath lectures Gribitz endlessly who fails to repeat anything back correctly (maliciously).  Their destination is quite hard to miss, as the party comes across a crater in the ground 120 feet across.  Veldra suggests it is some manner of wagon that fell from a great height.  Peering down, it is more like a sea-faring vessel made of metal and wood and separated into rooms below decks exposed by great rents in the hull from where the ship broke apart either on impact or before.  The closest anyone can guess, the construction seems dwarven in origin but a ship in the middle of the land is impossible to explain.  There are dwarven corpses strewn throughout the crater and the wreck.  Grath rolls one over and his stomach turns as its face is completely gone and smeared on the ground in a path back towards the wreckage.There are pieces of wreckage everywhere, but no golden gears readily apparent.  Something does catch the light and grab Grath’s attention.  When Grath tries to pull it out of the wreckage he awakens some kind of automaton it was attached to that doesn’t recognize Grath’s authority and immediately starts marching off to the north and east.  Hundreds of miles distant there are several dwarven clan holds the party is vaguely aware of, but even Rho who has spent time among the stout folk in the Southlands can offer nothing about the northern clan holds. Inside the ship Gribitz finds mostly collapsed areas but several rooms and halls are big enough for the goblin to squeeze into.  In a control room he finds a wealth of buttons and levers he starts interacting with to great effect.  The ship tries to move and falls apart even worse with Gribitz getting conked on the head by a golden runed gear that falls loose.Gribitz calls once more on the spirits of the Fey and once more the girls answer his call.  They zip off to every corner of the ship they can squeeze into and find another golden gear and a few silver pieces.  Gribitz emerges sometime later to find the others who have setup camp in the crater.  He shares what he’s found, even as the necromancer Grath animates the corpse of the dwarf outside the wreckage and begins questioning the spirits of the dead.“What is this contraption on the ground?”“Dis ‘ere me FLYING CRAFT!”“What is the magic of these golden gears?”“Dat d’ere is me MAGIC GEAR crafted by the most expert of the dwarves.  It makes naughty word fly.”“Where can I find this most expert of the dwarves?”“In the MOUNTAINS up north in the dwarven hold of Uth’unskhath!”“What was the golem that came from the wreckage?”“Officer of the Watch.  Pilot testing.  Did not go well.”“Do you want me to bury you and your other dwarves?”“Nah!  Just take the gears, give them back to the clan!”Grath, Veldra, and Rho are all amazed at the ingenuity of the dwarves.  Gribitz takes a nonsensical counter argument but in his attempts to show how the whole thing isn't so clever ends up knocking himself (and two of his teeth) out.  Later when he awakens, Gribitz sheepishly buries the corpses the party has recovered though there are some that not even Rho can pull free of the wreckage. The party returns to the mad goblin workshop.  No one points out what a bad idea it might be to give more experimental dwarven magical tech to a goblin that has already crashed one ship.  But the journey to the dwarven lands seems too long and at some level the curiosity of the party is too strong.  The mad goblin excitedly crows over the new gears and integrates them into his new craft. The party watches as he wheels it into position and climbs into it.  It blasts into into the air spirals out of control and immediatley explodes as it crashes back to the earth.  The party stands open-mouthed at the catastrophe except for Gribitz who shrugs and sets about looting the goblin’s workshop mercilessly. He finds two wrenches and a screwdriver.  He finds food which he pockets, more of the berries from the earlier wreckage, he finds a strange bag.  He dumps it out but it just keeps dumping and dumping all kinds of goblin junk.  Gribitz eventually gives up and starts stuffing all the junk back into the bag of holding along with everythying else he can scoop up in the workshop.  When he emerges he finds no one waited on him.  Shrugging, he straps on the heavy bag of holding and turns into a rabbit.Once reunited, Grath is pretty sure Gribitz was up to no good and has all manner of lectures stored up for when the Wild Shape wears off.  The party makes camp again and Grath sleeps like a necromancer.  In the morning, the party resumes their journey south to Yvril, getting further and further away from Uth’unskhath and the golden gears their fallen sailors requested being returned with their already dead last breath.  On the fourth day when Yvril should be getting fairly close, a commercial center finally comes into view.  Caravans and merchants, houses and people all bustling about their activity.  Gribitz looks about for the most exotic looking merchant he can find.  There are three scaled beings, more lizard than dragonborn.  They are travelers from the far east.  Gribitz asks them what the best thing to eat in town is, but they don’t know.  They aren’t up on the local cuisine, Gribitz trades some dwarven teeth and goblin teeth to them for a feather decorated sickle he likes the look of.  It’s very tribal looking.Grath still hasn’t caught up on his sleep and trudges straight to the Humble Man’s Eatery which he assures the party is a good place to stay.  They are mostly full up however with only one room remaining.  It has two beds but that’s it.  It is very cheap, two copper per night, and accordingly the accommodations are very humble.  Still, the more civilized members of the party appreciate not sleeping on the ground for a change.  Rho takes care of getting Yip and the cart stabled for the night.  Rho doubles the price to get things well taken care of.  At the kindness the stablemaster remarks on a large dragonborn coming through a couple months ago, but just by himself.  Gribitz asks around about the best food in town, the stablemaster says there’s a place in between the Dragon’s Hoard and the Dragon’s Lair (two competing taverns that hate each other), in the alley between them is a guru that serves up the best food (and drugs) in town.  Rho is asked by Gribitz which one had the good food, but he mistakenly points to the Hoard.  A creepy guy in a large hat emerges from a dark alley and says neither of those places has good food, but the real good food is his specialty.  He takes us back to his tent where he mixes all manner of ingredients neither Rho nor Gribitz have ever seen.His cooking is more a magical ritual than cooking.  Gribitz is overwhelmed with flavors when he shoves his face in the cauldron.  It is life changing for Gribitz.  He bawls with how good it is.  Rho is similarly enchanted by the taste of the concoction but it speaks to his draconic heritage, like fire in his belly at the first taste.  It’s got exotic kick even for the big dragonborn.  It is reminiscent of the spiritual journey drugs of his tribal shamans.  Gribitz asks for the recipe but is told it is beyond his ken.  The ingredients are gathered from all over and the combination is too complex.  Gribitz pays for some to go and is asked to spread the word about Mr. Worldwide.  Afterwards the party reunites back at the Humble Man’s Eatery.  Veldra isn’t having any of the colorful dish Rho and Gribitz bring back and goes for a basic stew while Grath gets the super basic porridge.  Rumors around the eatery about kobolds from the south, strange objects flying through the air, and necromancers infiltrating Yvril.  Grath perks up at the last one and asks about how long ago that started.  He is pointed to the stablemaster to find out more.  Grath ponders murdering the slanderous loudmouthed goblin he travels with and talks with Veldra in Celestial about what he suspects Gribitz to be responsible for.  Grath is furious but Veldra is unmoved.Grath goes shopping in Yvril in a general store for two watertight barrels. 10 empty vials, incense, 10 candles, rations, and other supplies he believes he will need on the road ahead to Rhoseth's desert tribes.</blockquote>

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