A recap of last Sunday's game session, just to set the mood:
In the last session (12/26), the party arrived at the site known as the Chamber of Dissolution. Charged with the task of inspecting and preparing the ancient clockwork mechanisms within four sites, they recalled freeing the hivemind witch Guri from the Grail of Impurities but leaving the site without attending to the musical machine within. At the second site, known only as the Orb of Purification, the party encountered the spectral kraken Mikrokosmus. One site, the Deadwater Fountain, remained undiscovered.
It was the undead kraken that shared the means of destroying the enclave of mermaid witches which now wore his tentacles, grafted in place of their tails. The four sites must be prepared with care and a sacrifice must be placed upon the altar hidden beneath the isle, causing the Sinking Isle to rise once more. Then ancient gears would spring into motion, acting in unison to forge a weapon of the mysterious metal known as Oerthblood.
The tsantsa Meir, once a shellycoat of great power but now an unliving shrunken head slain by her own daughter, reflected upon the party’s predicament. Having visited Turucambi Reef, the party collected the first of three tomes which outlined the means by which her mother Xaetra might be restored to life. With the knowledge gleaned from the first tome, they collected Xaetra’s soul within an artifact known as the Lazarus.
Transported from Turucambi to the waters near the Sinking Isle, in the realm of the Sea Barons, the party recovered the second tome which trapped the hag’s soul within a magical construct, an eidolon, fashioned from ambergris. The third tome, which would restore the hag to life, was supposedly lost within a region known as the Jungle of Lost Ships.
Upon Xaetra’s resurrection, the evils of the blackwater hag Diadema would be undone, for her unliving form incorporated the mortal remains of Xaetra herself, as well as Xaetra’s sea hag granddaughter Tempest and daughter Salkt, a salt hag. Xaetra had learned that, upon her return to life she would embrace the path of the Chronomancer. She would travel to far future to witness the destruction of Oerth, before being trapped in the distant past. Upon her temporal travels, she would leave clues to her future self, in the form of the three tomes.
The viletooth lizardman Dorman was the first to see that, standing atop the remains of the tower walls which held the Chamber of Dissolution, were six skeletal forms. NeeKaa, the oceanid, spied gears turning beneath the bony ribcages of the strange creatures and plates of opalescent pearlsteel bolted to their bones. The sea elf Sakura watched as the skeletons ascended the tower walls to throw the bones they had collected into its hollow interior.
Wielding spears seemingly fashioned from the spines of dolphins, the clockwork skeletons closed upon the party. The diminutive anemoid known as Knot, member of a race of intelligent anemones, divined that their opponents were not creatures of the undead. Dorman was the first to discover that the bony spears held electrical magics.
As Sakura’s young ward Reiko watched two of the skeletons fighting one another, the party’s locathah companion Canthus used his magical cuttlefish quill to coat the gears of one skeleton with viscous ink. The skeleton turned upon the unwary artisan and unleashed the fury of its spear upon him. Canthus noted the spears were actually the skeletons of eels, coated similarly with pearlsteel.
Sakura felt her own powers of stealth and darkness grow, in part due to her growing attraction to the unusual blackwater currents within a shallow trench upon the isle. Her ward Reiko, however, had been dealt a crippling blow during her recent abduction by the mermaid witches and their benefactor, a sea hag fleshwarper known only as Purl. Purl removed Reiko’s legs and grafted in their place the body of a water naga, while simultaneously grafting two tentacles from a giant squid and an eye from a powerful beast known as the eye of the deep.
Reiko’s fragile sanity had been saved, in party due to her timely bonding with Shadow, a ghostly visage. Dorman had previously bonded with the living tattoo Echo, another of the soul shards cast off by Xaetra before her murder at the hands of a covey of hags led by Tempest. The third shard, known simply as Me, remains undiscovered.
During the ensuing battle, NeeKaa, Canthus, and Dorman were injured by the magical spears. One of the skeletal assailants was destroyed in a cloud of bubbles spewing from the base of the tower, while another was destroyed by one of its own. The part noted that each skeleton seemed to have one component which was made entirely of metal and enshrouded in eldritch fire of azure hue.
In due time, the battle was won, in part due to the aid of the party’s many companions, including the amphisbaena eel Jur, hatchling coral dragon Gobble, and Hasu the half-dragon sea cat. The locathah Canthus, struck twice by the electrical spears, was slain in the course of the combat. Removed from the innate abilities she once held in life, Xaetra relied upon the components held within her mystic apothecary. Using an arcane infusion, she transformed the corpse of Canthus into a statue of stone.
Examining the base of the tower in closer detail, the party noted it was ringed by a circle of statues, each of an unknown humanoid that seemed both reptilian and fish-like. One statue stood out from the rest, however, as it appeared as a concave depression instead of a sculpture.
DM’S NOTES: To be honest, I wasn’t sure if anyone was going to show up on the day after Christmas. We gamed an extra hour, so I was more than pleased. The players of Ryllis the shoal halfling, Junae the mermaid, and Sir Boral the aventi did not attend tonight’s game.
The four sites of ancient clockwork mechanisms were inspired by equipment used to keep saltwater reef aquariums. The Grail of Impurities, Orb of Purification, Chamber of Dissolution, and Deadwater Fountain were simply a protein skimmer, ultraviolet sterilizer, calcium reactor, and reverse osmosis/deionization filter, albeit in a grand scale with some magics thrown in.
The clockwork skeletons, inspired by the Antikythera Mechanism, were actually gold clockwork horrors.
