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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9874813" data-attributes="member: 27780">All 4 regulars present. Having warped off the elemental plane of fire, they then split up to cover more ground. The drow left the party with the aim of scrying & teleporting around the world to alert as many gold dragons as possible to the upcoming invasion before it began, since they would be the obvious thing to counter all the red ones the githyanki ride. (his player still hasn't shown up again and as one of the things he was frequently talking about, I thought it seemed the best way to write his character out for now.) The sniper spent a full day teleporting around Pharagos, reporting to the Queen of Glass about all the things he'd seen on the other side of the gate. She was eager to know more and dispatched several more tsochar with class levels to join the investigative team, but also wary, as even if the illithid did also serve Mak Thuum Ngatha (still not confirmed) they would likely still try to take over the power structure of the cult here. (they might be servants of an eldritch lovecraftian entity, but they’re not so insane as to not care about status <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) He then checked in on his previous efforts to alert people to the upcoming invasion, finding that the halflings of hoquan had taken them most seriously and melted away into the swamps, while the human settlements had seemingly not believed an anonymous warning from a projected voice and were just carrying on as normal. Slightly disappointed by the lack of fighting spirit, he teleported back to the others for the next phase of their information gathering. Meanwhile the githyanki & binder headed back to Tu'narath for what would probably be their last peaceful visit. (the other two had hit 16th level after the last fight and they were only a few hundred xp away from levelling as well) There they found the place noticeably less crowded than before, but still extremely busy, with troops shipping out as fast as they could, and new ships still in construction even at this late stage. He reported success in the heist, but continued to keep secret the existence of a gate to another universe where it was looking increasingly likely the illithid empire still existed, in case this was what the lich-queen was really searching for on Pharagos and revealing it would play into her master plan. The binder took care of the shopping (and they're really starting to feel the effects of the lich-queen's cap on spellcasters around here when it comes to purchasing certain magical items) while he also secretly visited General Zetch'r'r, to discuss their plans for eventually defeat the lich-queen. Emac: during the day i had in the gith city, i also drop by the general's ship, i teleport and dimension door around, so im hard to follow, and as always detect scrying is onif im allowed to see him again when i arrive, id like to have a convo with himGM: Absolutely.Emac: I would cast mage's private sanctum before commencingwould let him talk first if he wantsGM: The general makes sure you are fully inside and warded before speaking. "Ah, Emac. What news do you have?"Emac: “Much, I intended to visit to discuss plans for the day, both to ensure we don't lose too many lives unnecesarily in Pharagos, since that is after all just a convenient distraction to get them away from the Palace,.."and I also wanted to discuss how we would avoid a civil war and internal fragmentation. as in how to we command the needed authority to bring the knights and the generals into order..""but..."well, tell me what you think General and I'll dive into the butZetch”’r’r: I do have the beginnings of a plan for that.""As a wizard of your experience might know, the ability of the githyanki to shift planes is not truly innate, but powered by a beacon in the astral sea, constructed by one of the lich-queen's predecessors. If someone were to damage that once the invasion had begun, the forces on Pharagos would be thrown into disarray, cut off from communication and unable to easily leave. This would give us a perfect opportunity to attack the lich-queen's castle while her strongest forces are elsewhere. If we did not completely destroy it, then whoever repaired it would have the gratitude of our people and it would be relaively easy to establish a new order afterwards. Of course, that still requires that we defeat her and destroy her phylactery, but with multiple distractions, I believe that would be the point she is most vulnerable."Emac: "hmm, Pharagos has been preparing a defense, my own mercenary allies playing a big part as some are natives of that planet. I do not want our troops stuck there, unable to pull back. could we use spells like redirect portal to send the ships elsewhere? yes individual giths can still tracel with their innate plane shift but why would they abandon their ships, specially if the ship has by mistake ended up in the wrong place""but i see what you mean about being the heroes who repaired the beacon..."Zetch’r’r: "Perhaps an astral storm? We do both know someone who is skilled at manipulating those. It would not get all our forces, but if even some were scattered on the astral just before the invasion begun that would further reduce our casualties."Emac smiles knowing he knows the wizard has been found "great""Here's the but: One of the mercenaries I travel with, the shifty kobold sorcerer, in passing -as if it's no big deal- said that he belives Gith Himself is alive and being kept by the goddess of red dragons Tiamat! I do not know where he got this notion, but it might be true - coming from him, he's a strange creature, not properly grounded in realty, yet full of surprising insights that turn out to be true...if true this changes the entire dynamic of our struggle, and the very identity of our allies and adversaries.." Emac waits for him to consider and respond if he wants toZetch’r’r: ”It is quite possible. She must have given or done something pretty important to keep that deal with the red dragons going all these years. Maybe she labors still in Tiamats realm."Emac: If the dragons are our enemies, perhaps we should let the armada with the dragons - and you should encourage the deployment of the vast majority of the dragons if that is within your influence - all go into Pharagos, and then we call back using whatever means we have, the true githyanki loyal troops back to Astral so they do not fall needlessly in Pharagos""we need to know whether this is true, if we cannot trust the dragons to work with the post revolutionary githyanki command we must know ahead of time"Zetch’r’r A good question. Is their loyalty to the gith as a whole, Gith herself, or the Vlaakith line, which has no heirs at this point."Emac: imagine, if we could bring Gith back? all questions of succesion and discent and the right to command would dissappear" he smiles looking distantly at a wall"how does one rescue a prisoner from the clutches of a goddess""i dont know, perhaps this is not the right time to pursue that"Zetchr’r: But if taking her from Tiamat voids the deal, that would greatly weaken us long term. This needs more research before acting rashly."Emac :hmm, so we should attempt to continue the arrangement with tiamat? so we can continue to command dragons?"Emac is thinking - but not saying - that if Gith comes back, githyanki and githzerai would likely reunite, and that would more than compensate for the loss of the red dragons"i understand the strategy, but we should at least try to send them all away to Pharagos to remove a variable for hte post-revolution succession struggle""we scramble the gates with an astral storm as soon as our own troops have been called back""and once we know the deal with Tiamat is transferrable to the new leaership, we help the red dragons also return to astral"Z”etch’r’r: Yes, If we make sure that the red dragons are first in line to attack, which should not be difficult with their temperaments, we can further minimise casulties among our own people. I will try and adjust the tactics of the units I have contacts with accordingly."Once they'd sorted that out, their next course of action was trying to rescue Zerr, Rei and the other two. First, the priestess used Sendings to try and contact Zerr & Rei. Zerr's response was typically laconic, he was ok and hiding out in the sewers but some pretty wild stuff had been going on up top. (details then cut off due to word limit of the spell) However, there was no response from Rei at all. This highly concerned the binder, who was quite fond of her most powerful minion. (besides the sentient glove and airship, of course) Since that hadn't worked the next thing they tried was heading through the portal in the enveloping pit to Ruun-Khazai to get Karluth to use his spells. One Limited Wish later confirmed that Rei was not only alive, but very strongly so, but in a location shielded from any weaker scrying. Unsure how to deal with that, they decided to get Zerr first. The sniper decided to go in alone for this bit, since he's by far the best at stealthy stuff and the others would just slow him down. Teleporting to just outside Redeagle, he saw that things had indeed taken a sharp turn for the worse. Circling above were three airships very similar to the one they just defeated. (cue Bowser's airship theme) On the fields to the east of the city was an even larger rolling fortress belching out toxic smoke. (Using the image of The Relentless from the Blood War boxed set) There were devils on every gate to the city and abishai patrolling the skies above. Fortunately, his combo of invisibility and blink meant he didn't even have to get close to them to get inside, slipping through the walls and to one of the sewer entrances they scouted in the last visit. Zerr took several hours to find, and he had to avoid several patrols of amnizu along the way but eventually he was located in the thieves hideout they'd passed earlier. (using the map from <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/polyhedron-dungeon.861315/post-24866207" target="_blank">Skulking Below</a>) From Zerr, he got a rough timeline of the events after they had completed the heist. For the first three days there was slowly increasing unrest as the news gradually spread through the population, with people growing increasingly angry at the bank as it became obvious all their money was gone. On the fourth one a wave of devils had burst out of there and spread through the city, taking control of the place. Since then their numbers had steadily increased and people were being dragged off the streets & thrown into prison without trial for the slightest infractions. Whispers in the taverns pinned the blame on Azurax, the second most powerful wizard on the council of nine that are the big power behind the throne here. Unable to pay the devils for their services in coin anymore, (as the PC's found out when they tried using Disobedience to free them) while also wanting more forces to hunt down the people responsible for the heist, he'd fallen back on the traditional lower-planar method of using the souls of the population as payment instead. Fortunately Zerr is also pretty good at evading notice and poking around in places he shouldn't be, and had uncovered another bit of ancient technology hidden from the general population. There was a strange cavern under the northern side of the city, where a massive metal contraption rode along two metal rails into a tunnel. This had been taking shipments of the prisoners away in the middle of the night. This seemed like the obvious place to go next and so they headed down the tunnels and lurked invisibly until midnight, where a chunky train with a devilish face on the front did indeed pull into the station, emitting foul-smelling smoke all the while despite this being underground. As the captives were being loaded onto it they noticed that amongst them was one of the lower level bards from the heist, looking distinctly thinner than last time they’d seen him. They used their climbing skills to sneak onboard and cling invisibly to the ceiling of the train, which wasn’t particularly pleasant given how tightly the prisoners were packed, but at least none of the devil guards had detect invisibility, so they still managed to pull it off. It thundered into the darkness for several hours without interruption. Growing increasingly worried that it would lead them into somewhere dangerous they couldn’t teleport out of without the others, Nurhi decided to try and get away now. Touching both Zerr and the captured bard, it turned out this section of tunnel wasn’t warded (too expensive to put it up all the way along several hundred miles of tunnel) and they could teleport back to the binder’s airship, currently parked way to the north alongside the Kadtanach Once Zerr and the bard were thoroughly debriefed and they’d had another night’s rest (since they had arrived at around 3am in the morning) they discussed their next move. The binder was the most reckless one as usual, wanting to go straight to the city with all guns blazing and tear the place apart until she found her two remaining minions. She had to be reminded that they were still pretending to be loyal to the lich-queen, and it was still 36 days to the big invasion date. If they did that before then they’d get a reprimand at the very least. However, a wizard’s sanctum, which they were already pretty certain was several hundred miles away from the city, probably in a remote location, would be another matter entirely. They did use one of their Discern Location scrolls, intended for hunting down the chains, to see if that was strong enough to penetrate whatever shields blocked Rei from weaker scrying. This still didn’t give a precise enough location to just teleport in, but did reveal that she was indeed in the most remote part of the Sleeper’s Teeth, about three hundred miles northeast of Redeagle in somewhere the mountains of Volkrad. If they snuck into Redeagle and used Air Walk to fly down the tunnel, they could make that journey before the day was out as long as they didn’t hit the train coming the other way. (and at their level, it probably wouldn’t kill them in one hit even if they failed the reflex save. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> ) A couple of checks for stealth and wandering monsters later, both of which went smoothly for them, they were speeding down the pitch-black tunnel. Somewhere between 5 & 6 tedious hours later, they finally saw a split in the tracks. Curving off to the right, the tunnel got wider and higher. They dropped out of air form but remained invisible. It was time for them to enter what is probably the last stitched-together megadungeon of the campaign, combining <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/polyhedron-dungeon.861315/post-24240969" target="_blank">Train of Events</a>, <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/polyhedron-dungeon.861315/post-23640806" target="_blank">Threshold of Evil</a>, <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/polyhedron-dungeon.861315/post-24834717" target="_blank">Cloudkill</a> and <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/polyhedron-dungeon.861315/post-23966625" target="_blank">Ghazal</a> into one big interlinked complex, with some upgrades to the monsters due to the level of the players and some further twists due to the nature of the campaign. (the fact that Lord Fell was raised by githyanki opens up some very interesting roleplaying possibilities when the characters meet him) They easily snuck past the barbazu posted at area 1, but the grey slaad replacing the derro in the original adventure do have detect invisibility (and would definitely have been ordered to keep it active under the circumstances), and so everyone except the sniper was spotted as they went up onto the platform and past door 4. They raised the alarm and so the PC’s had to deal with both them and the Hamatula posted at door 16. The binder did most of the work of that, while the sniper snuck ahead to see what the rest of the station was like. There is of course another door on the north side, and having been alerted, the guards on this one were actively looking for him. They managed to zap him with their chaos hammers, prompting him to duck off the side of the platform onto the tracks and shoot them back with wings of flurry. After having knocked down the two on the first door, the binder charged over to help him out. Meanwhile the githyanki & priestess handled the hamatula with no great problem, before dimension dooring over to the others as the barbazu approached slowly from behind. (knowing all too well that this was probably above their pay grade and they were likely to take an express trip back to hell soon, but still had to look like they were doing their job) We conclude this session knowing the next one will be solid action. But just how long can the minions here hold off PC’s vastly more powerful than them with choke points and defensible terrain, and will they decide to explore the lawful or chaotic side of the station first, which lead to different locations. Plenty of different ways this could turn out and affect the plot long-term even if it looks pretty certain they can handle pretty much anything I throw at them combat-wise.</blockquote>

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