Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 389032" data-attributes="member: 726">I'm glad you folks enjoyed the write-up of that session -- it was one of my favorites as well.   Truly fine role-playing by Morningstar's player and by Piratecat.  They made it easy to get real emotion out of a scene when it was called for.  I also liked the sheepish look on the other players' faces when they remembered that their familiars were snooping on such a personal moment.  <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=":)" />On with the story!Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 150 Sunday, July 21- Tuesday, July 23The next day the Company splits up.  Through a combination of teleport and wind walk spells, most of the party goes home to the Greenhouse in Tal Hae, while Kibi, Morningstar and Grey Wolf go back to Kallor to tidy up some loose ends.  Grey Wolf rescues the bones of his father from the oily pit below the city.  Morningstar blesses them, and they are given a proper burial beneath a spreading tree in the backyard of one of their new estates.  Kibi spends some time inspecting the huge Black Circle Ritual Room, remembering that the Black Circle enchantments keeping it from collapse won’t last indefinitely.  He figures out where a few stone columns should shore it up, and instructs Morningstar as she casts wall of stone in some key places.   When she is done, Kibi is satisfied that there will not be a catastrophic collapse of the surrounding buildings into the huge gaping pit.  Speaking of which: the three of them spend some time walking through their new houses, which are generally only one or two stories, but roomy and elegant.   Captain Cobb is busy moving his family into the vacated estate of Lord Southinghorn.   In the drawing room of the manse formerly occupied by Lord Cosnor, a man comes to the door and clears his throat.  He is tall and well dressed, and in a smooth, oily voice introduces himself as Farris, the major domo of the estate.  While most of the former staff has fled, he and a few others have stayed behind to assist the new masters in anything they might need.   They thank him, but thinking it prudent they also cast detect magic and detect evil on him.  He is not evil, and has no magic on him, but there is powerful magic coming from a nearby wall.  A large 4’ x 6’ painting hanging there (a sunny landscape complete with trees, pond and ducks) is strong in both Illusion and Conjuration magic.Farris shows them the most interesting feature of the upper floors, which is a large orrery beneath a retractable roof.  It’s a huge contraption with spinning planets and moons against a backdrop of stars, set in motion by a switch at the base of the wall.  Lord Cosnor used to spend many evenings up with the orrery, but never allowed Farris or the other house staff to be present.After dismissing Farris for the evening, they investigate the magical painting.  A bit of poking around reveals that the bucolic landscape is an illusion and that the picture frame is really a magical gateway into an unknown space.  To Morningstar and Grey Wolf’s horror, Kibi sticks his arm through, and then pulls it back.   Before the dwarf can put his head through to look inside, the other two pull him away.  “Are you crazy?” says Morningstar.  “This place was owned by the Black Circle. That painting could go anywhere.  What if there’s another Black Circle temple or something on the other side?”“I didn’t feel anything,” says Kibi, shrugging.  “I’ll bet it’s fine.”But the paranoia of the others wins the moment.  They try a number of ploys to learn about the painting without actually sticking body parts through.  Grey Wolf tosses a candlestick tied to a rope into the painting, then quickly pulls it out again.  It’s unharmed.   As a second experiment, they untie the rope and toss the candlestick inside, after which Kibi casts locate object to find it.  Nothing.  Kibi goes outside, casts fly, and searches all around Kallor for the candlestick via the spell.  Still nothing.  Wherever the painting goes, it’s either more than several hundred feet away, or on another plane. Back in Cosnor’s drawing room, Kibi can’t contain his curiosity, and before the others can stop him, he sticks his head through the painting.  A few seconds later he pulls it back out, a big grin on his face.“See?  Nothing ate me.  It’s just a small room with no windows or doors.”  He grins.  “But there are some barrels and trunks around the edges of the room, a stack of bricks, and a bunch of coins scattered on the floor.  I think it’s a treasure room!”Kibi wants to go in immediately and start opening the trunks, but Grey Wolf and Morningstar convince him to wait for Flicker to check them for traps.  A sending, some reduces and a teleport later, the whole Company is assembled in their new estate, crowded eagerly around the painting.  Dranko, Morningstar, Kibi and Flicker crawl through the mahogany frame and into a small, damp room with earthen walls, ceiling and floor, supported with wooden posts. Morningstar checks the room for both evil and magic but finds neither.  Flicker discovers (and easily disarms) some needle traps on the trunks and starts popping them open; coins glint in the light of their continual flame torch.  Flicker’s eyes widen.  There are twenty trunks, each overflowing with gold and silver pieces.  He does some quick guessing and figures there are probably about 100,000 coins all told.  The six barrels are even better.  They are filled to various degrees with small gems!  Flicker takes a few minutes to appraise a random sampling, does some more figuring, and guesses that their total worth could be over 100,000 gold pieces.   And it gets even better – the “bricks” stacked by one wall of the room are silver, gold and platinum trade bars, worth another 30,000 gold pieces.  That brings the total value of the Black Circle’s treasury to almost 200,000 gp.  Flicker and Dranko weep with joy while giving themselves a treasure bath in a half-full barrel of gems.  Morningstar rolls her eyes and shoos them out of the room, where they tell the others (waiting expectantly) about the haul.   The next day they will use the bag of holding to get the loot back to Tal Hae, and start some much-anticipated crafting of magic items.When everyone else has gone to bed, Morningstar sneaks down to the drawing room, looks about furtively, and climbs into the painting.   With an embarrassed yet blissful smile on her face, she digs her hands into a barrel of gems, and sprinkles them onto her head, letting them fall back into the barrel and onto the floor.Ah, what a lovely sound.  …to be continued…</blockquote>

Verification