Episode 1307: Wait, where's he going?

And we're back, we were off last Monday due to the holiday. To refresh our memory ....

Tsedek, our charming Tiefling Rogue

Itanis, a devious High Elf Wizard, fond of controlling any situation we may find ourselves in

Leoven, our quiet but effective Wood Elf Ranger

Magnus, the Human Paladin of Heironious, he has followed a vengeance path

Elle, the small but sparky High Elf Wizard, fond of blowing things up with lots of fire

And we have an NPC: Gearbox, a Monodrone, who is Elle's follower. He looks like a round ball on legs but think more along the lines of R2D2 in skills and abilities

So when we last left this party, Tsedek was frustrated about his missing brother Malek. He decides to cast scry to find Malek, only it goes horribly wrong. Instead of being a true scry, only in Tsedek's mind's eye, we all get sucked into this swirling purple vortex and see everything going on. Not the normal scry at all. While Tsedek concentrated hard on finding his brother, the rest of the party had to deal with fiends. First there was a white fiend and a black fiend, then there was a pair of green fiends, then there was a blue fiend and a red fiend. They taunt us, Magnus taunts back. Turns out they were agents of Tiamat. Challenging demonic dragon queens through minions seems like a great idea?

But Tsedek is able to maintain his concentration on the spell while we dealt with the fiends, though at some point Gearbox gets frozen and shoved outside of the swirling purple energies and is presumed lost.

When the last of the fiends dies, Tsedek's spell clarifies into a vision. This vision has a large dragon flying around throwing explosions, a fire elemental throwing fire, a large cow-man on fire, an orc wearing wizard robes, a small shiny armored gnome on another dragon ... and Malek, shooting arrows that deliver spells. There's also a large purple ooze bouncing around. The battle shifts and changes constantly with no rhyme or reason as to who is on what side of the fight but we watch as first the shiny figure on the dragon fades from existence after taking massive damage, then the flaming cow-man, then the orc wearing wizard robes.

Then the scene cuts to a small room with six figures laying prone as a hawk hops from person to person before settling on the drow's form. First the three that faded from the fight scene mid-battle gasp and come to life, then the other three followed suit. And that is where Tsedek's scry ended. We all became aware of our surroundings again on the side of the mountain where we fought the weird frog creatures. And Gearbox is here alive and well.

Elle had to point out that Malek is in some strange evil company with the orc and the drow, and whatever that pink winged thing is, perhaps his life hasn't gone as well as Tsedek has hoped. "I know my brother, he wouldn't associate with evil, and he's always had a fondness for misfits" so we left the conversation at that.

But at this point the characters are all exhausted, bleeding, bruised, and in need of rest, so Elle pulls out a new version of our resting hut. The old version was basically a 10' round dome and about as comfortable as a tent. The new one though takes glamping to a new level. She casts the spell and a door appears in the cliff beside us. As the party walks through the door off to the left is a small stable, for when we have horses with us. We parked the lobster there.

Once you go through a second door you are in a great hall. Large fireplace on one end, comfortable chairs around, in the middle there's a big table to hold a feast. Going around the perimeter of the room there are 6 doors, first is for Magnus, then Tsedek, then Elle, then Itanis, then Leoven. The last is for the servant's area/kitchens. There are nearly transparent servants around delivering food/drink, heating water for baths, etc.

Magnus, Tsedek, Elle, and Itanis' rooms are about the same. They each have a sturdy 4-poster bed, bath tub, fireplace, table/chairs. Think a quality castle room. Magnus' has the addition of a prayer-kneeler. Leoven's room though has the look of being in the forest ... trees everywhere, a nice hammock, a bathtub tucked in the corner, and the subtle sounds of birds and crickets.

So we all settle down for a much needed rest. Or so we thought.

In the wee hours of the morning, Tsedek hears a door open, then close. Then another door open, then close. After a moment he decides to investigate. He realizes it was Magnus' door, then the exterior door, that opened and closed so he went outside but realized Magnus wasn't there. Tsedek started tracking Magnus but quickly realized that Magnus had started running ... and was wearing the power suit. So Tsedek came back into our hut and alerted us all to what was going on.

At this point we realized we were going to need a lot of speed to try to catch Magnus so Elle asked her friend Gearbox to take Tsedek's Lobster and head for Dragon's Bane Keep and then help Melchizedor with any mechanical needs the Keep expansion may need. So he took off. And we did too.

Leoven tried real hard to track Magnus. It's not like he's not leaving foot prints, he's north of 300 pounds at this point. And we were tracking him for quite awhile fairly successfully, even managed to follow him into a swamp then back out. We think he was trying to disguise his path but quickly realized he was too heavy to be in a swamp successfully.

Unfortunately we eventually lose his trail though. Leoven does manage to find it again but by then we had lost way too much time to be able to catch up to Magnus. So Tsedek offers to scry for Magnus. After much hesitation given how the last scry went, we agree.

This time it works like a proper scry and only Tsedek sees what is going on, though he does share the information. Magnus is running, the power suit is invisible but he can see Magnus, and it appears that Magnus is sleep-running. It is the suit that is heading out full steam ahead. And we can't catch it. And we do not know where it is going.

More next week!