Sheets to the Wind

[kiya]

• Session 20: Wallops and Castor
  
• Session 21: Let's Split Up. We can do more damage that way.
  
• Session 22: Shamantic Disposition
  
• Session 23: Wherever It Wants
  
• Session 24: Interlude interrupted by occasional prophecy and rhinoceri
  
• Session 25: Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
  
• Session 26: Travel the World, Meet Interesting People, and Kill Them
  
• Session 27: Terrible Pain in All the Diodes Down His Left Side
  
• Session 28: Into this they slipped the guinea-pig, head first, and then sat upon it
  

So we gathered at Wave's Rest to go look at Isen, with a bunch of halflings who wanted to look at Isen too. To see what happened to it and stuff. And so we started walking with the halflings and their ponies.

"So, are all of these stacks halflings, or are some of them ponies?"
"They're all halflings. They all have ponies. They're virtual ponies."
- me, teinedreugan

So we made a little caravan and we started going towards Isen. And it got wet. There was a thick band of clouds, spreading, circling, making storm, drowning the land. The land was not really all that happy about it, with all the ground animals flooded out of their homes and the ground sliding, and I could tell the way the land was that this was wrong.

And there were things in the sky, dancing in the storm, lightning and wind, like giant birds. And they were there, and I studied them, and the storm was there, and they all had patterns.

"Twenty-nine."
"Twenty-nine."
"We're in synch here."
"*rolls* Twenty-nine."
- jikharra, Shane, jikharra, me (and that's with a +9 check)
(I can't remember or deduce what this check was about, of course.)

Some of the birds swooped down at us, bringing the lightning with them. They were caught up in little whirling gusts of wind, they were hard to shoot at, and they wouldn't get close enough to hit because they could fly. And that was no good.

Then some of them started dancing, and it was like some sort of ritual magical thing, and that was really no good, and we managed to disrupt one of them, and the others teleported away for a while, and we started looking for cover and headed towards a nearby hill.

We found a little space there, an old tower or something, all ruined, but its basement was out of the storm and the birdthings couldn't get in. There was enough space for everyone, even the ponies, but there was some sort of tunnel down the back of it, with something probably living in it. Which is sort of an unfortunate thing to ponder at.

After some discussion, we set up some trigger things with Karas's talking magics so we'd know if it was coming out, and developed a plan for dealing with it.

"From what you said, and from what Adosar said, I'm not sure how much food it needs. It may just be looking for trouble."
"I feel like trouble. Do you?"
"Yeah."
"I feel more like trouble than food."
- Wren, Thiara, Wren, Karas

And it started to come out, a big wormy thing with teeth, and we were ready for it, and Renn started to talk to it, trying to convince it to go away, to not bother us or try to eat us, and all of that stuff. ("Your performance sucks, but it sucks just enough." --me) It got sort of confused and turned around and burrowed into the wall, and then Adosar threw a big spell at it, and it turned into a huge fight.

Renn was furious. Adosar pointed out that it didn't back up down the tunnel, it started digging a new one, and it went back and forth a lot here and there with the logic mostly being loud. I went outside eventually and got a bit wet, and thought about where we were. Karas went to talk to Renn, so she didn't need me, so I thought a lot.

It was interesting, the place, the way it was; I couldn't hear the land there, the way it patterned, which was the way I knew it was there in the first place. The spreading pattern of the plains had a hole in it, worn through, right where the ruined tower was.

"This place is a pulled thread in the bedsheet of the plains."
"Really."
"Because it's . . . beavered."
". . . I /almost/ understood that."
"Thiara has a magical vocabulary all her own."
- Thiara, Adosar, Thiara, Karas, Adosar

After all that, though, the halflings weren't sure it'd be smart to keep going, though one of them had sworn an oath to see Isen and was going to keep travelling. We spent a while dithering back and forth and discussing what we were doing before we started out again across the sogginess.

We got near the big river that ran down from World Peak into the Big Lake, and could see in the distance towers being built and repaired, full of people working that we couldn't quite see, but they looked like the lizard-people we'd fought before on the plains. There were whirls of something above the tower that was closest to us, and when we looked at it closely it looked like a huge mass of air elementals.

We thought about attacking the tower if we could, but decided that would probably be a dumb idea. ("We've killed more /Alar/ than /lizardmen/." --Adosar) But a smart idea would be going and looking at it, so we decided that we would use the far-stepping magic Adosar knew to get up near it where we could see better. Renn turned herself smaller so that he could do it, and we did.

"To see four people appear in the middle of a plain is not that difficult."
"..."
"Six people."
"Five people and a goose."
"Six /beings/. . ."
- teinedreugan, us, teinedreugan, keshwyn, teinedreugan

And we jumped there, and were hidden in invisibility magics, and we studied the tower for a while. A few of the elementals broke loose of the whirl above it and went looking for us, I guess they noticed the flicker or something, but they didn't find us, and after a bit we jumped back and we thought a lot about what it meant that it seemed that Reta's army and Astenak's elementals were working together. And I realised I should have paid more attention while we were there, but that was mostly testing theories. Because testing theories is a good idea. ("I should have tried to see if I could tell if the tower was there when I knew the tower was there by listening to the sheet." --Thiara)

So while we were thinking about this, some air elementals came swooping in and tried to grab us. They grabbed a hold of us and started carrying us all up into the sky, though we made it a little difficult for them in places. ("I become a dire bear. Graah." --Renn) And when we got up up up all the way up, we flicked through and we were somewhere else, where there was no down left. And they left us all on a rock.

And then elementals came to talk to us, and I really need to get Adosar to make me something that'll let me talk elemental talk, because knowing what people are saying is helpful. Karas did most of the talking at first.

"An explanation before summoning is a custom among our people."
"You get a sense of strange amusement."
- Karas, teinedreugan

The gist of what was going on is that Astenak had control of a magical artifact of some sort, something that was giving him lots and lots of control over air elementals, and that he was using them as guards and protectors and slaves and all sorts of things, and anyway, we weren't going to be able to get to him unless we took care of the magic thing. And they wanted the magic thing taken care of, because they weren't all that happy about being sucked into doing what he wanted them to. And that's why there were all the elementals stuck up on top of Reta's people's towers.

"You say we can't kill Astenak now."
"Yes."
"And you say we should destroy this artifact that gives him control over you."
"Yes."
"But you say we can't get there either."
"Yes."
"Do you have anything more constructive to suggest?"
"He's thinking earth at an air elemental."
"That should be sufficient."
- Adosar, elemental, Thiara, elemental

We wouldn't be able to break the Crystal Flute -- the thing they were upset about -- without some help. And that help was on the Plane of Earth, with someone called Grshrondigond. And so after we agreed to break the flute, they put us back in the place we'd come from, and we spent some time deciding what to do next.

The halfling was going to go have a look at where Isen was. We decided to go visit the Earth Oracle who had given us the big explody rock that we had to protect from the spider. (I hate spiders.)