Ep 1208: What in the world just happened

At the end of the last episode all 5 of our heroes had managed to leave the plummeting "treasury" ship and made it back to the still hovering main ship safely. With our loot of course, just not the beholder's eye that Elle wanted. Magnus squished that, Elle may have pouted a bit.

When we got back to the main ship we essentially bribed - paid - the now freed slaves to keep the ship afloat for a week till we can get some people up here to secure it for our use. And by our, I mostly mean Tsedek with some interest from Itanis. Magnus has no interest, neither does Leoven, in making a floating city. Elle is kinda on the fence on this one still but she does like the idea of income, so she's carefully watching for now.

We returned to the throne room to use the purloined book to adjust the throne's portal to go to where the item of great value is. Tsedek's rogue tinkering skills plus Elle's intelligence working together figured out how to do this successfully we believe. While we were doing that, Magnus made some holy water and started consecrating the area. He may have flicked a little water on Elle too, just to make sure.

So we reprogrammed the portal and Itanis then volunteers to activate it, which he did, and Magnus strides on through boldly as he is prone to do. Tsedek followed, then Elle, then Itanis, then Leoven rounded things out.

We find ourselves in a tunnel. Magnus, in the lead, strides off in the direction of the light. He's not stealthy and doesn't even try. We follow along on the lookout for problems but find none. Well, until we got to the end of the hallway. And that's when we discovered we were back on the ground level of the ship room, at the sphynx who stole a point of Magnus' intelligence last go round.

Tsedek walks up to the Sphynx and gives it an offer ... keep doing what it's doing, gathering knowledge here at this crossing while working for us. It did not like that and asked for the toll (which is a riddle it can not solve). Itanis came up with a clever word play that was essentially unsolvable, and it got horrendously mad.

As did Magnus, his expression changed to his "must smite" mode and so we went into fight mode. To be fair, at least 3 of us are cranky at this point which probably doesn't help our negotiating skills. Itanis kicked things off with his caltrops of doom, then the Sphynx moved to between Itanis and Elle and did an action that made us all do a Constitution save. Unfortunately both Elle and Leoven failed, and the creature aged us both 16 years*.

(side giggle: when the GM told us to pick even or odds for the failed saving throw, I said odd because I'm an odd person. The gentleman who plays Magnus started laughing.)

Elle responds with a classic fireball right on the creature, did 36 points of damage to it while excluding Elle and Itanis from the damage. Magnus, being his normal self, strides right up to the Sphynx and smacks it a lot. Leoven does what he does best, stands back and fires arrows.

The Sphynx then casts a spell on Itanis, to Banish him. And as we've proven numerous times, Itanis is not the charming sort, so he fails his Charisma save. Luckily he is also a utility mage with lots of tricks up his sleeve and does counter-spell successfully. I believe the Sphynx also took a swipe with claws at Magnus at this point. Tsedek walked in and did some melee damage then stepped away.

Then the creature does another action and next thing we know, everything is just everywhere. We're floating in literal limbo, one of the outer planes. No, none of us can plane shift us back, that skill is not one any of us have.

I think the only one not mad right now is Itanis, he's fascinated with the constant creation and shifting of matter on this plane.

Itanis responds by sending his flying caltrops at the Sphynx and Elle got super mad and used her one 6th level spell slot to cast Sunbeam. Such a harmless sounding thing really, but it sends a beam of pure radience at the target that does good damage and if they fail their save, they are blinded. It failed its save, so it is now blinded.

Then Magnus did a spell called Command, and commanded it to grovel. It also failed that save, so now we have a blinded grovelling Sphynx.

And that's when our lunch hour ended. Dang it, an hour goes so quick.

* Elves are very long lived in this game, up to 700 years. Losing 16 years is disturbing but not fatal to us, it'd be a much harsher consequence to Magnus (who is 42 currently, if he had gotten aged he would have been a retiree). Leoven was already an adult so he just aged; Elle is still a youth, even after aging 16 years she is only 92 (100 is adulthood for Elves).