Good eve to you, gents. Crowded tonight. May I sit here with you folk? Thank you, that’s very kind of you. Innkeep! Bread, a bowl of whatever that stew is, and mead to wash it down with. Who am I? Gray Erikkson, sorcerer and healer, master of the Stormseeker, the finest ship ever to grace the waters off the Realms.
A tale you say? Hmm, very well, I suppose I have one worth telling. It began with a summons to aid dwarven miners. A stout, surly lot they were. They were having a problem with dracolits. No, dracoLITs. Yes, when they said it, I thought they were saying dracolich as well. I think their thick beards have a tendency to muffle their speech.
At any rate, a goodly party of adventurers gathered and we set off with the dwarves to their mine, battling little dragon things en route. As we progressed, we began finding fragments of parchment, which I didn’t pay too much heed to at the time. Janus and Starmaw and Kallen were on it, and often having too many people work a puzzle makes it harder, not easier, so I trusted them to it.
At the mine itself, the fighting was close. No place to be flinging around bolts of lightning, even if I could press my way far enough forward to do so. The fighters went to the front, led by the warriors of Grimloch. They cleared the mine so the rest of us could safely wriggle our way through the tight passages. I was just getting to the last chamber of the mine when we were transported to some other place. No, I’m not quite sure what happened, but I suspect those fragments of parchment I’d paid not much heed to earlier factored rather large. So, suddenly instead of being in a mine with the whole of our party, I found myself on a trail with half of it. The trail led to a village of goblins and trolls. Now, I’ve generally found goblins and trolls to be hostile menaces as well, but these creatures were quite personable. They quickly accepted us as “pink goblins” and inducted us into the Star and Moon tribe. We were invited to compete for positions of honor in an imminent battle-ceremony. I found myself competing for the title of high mage. I acquitted myself well with accuracy with magic missiles, but archery proved my undoing, literally shooting myself in the foot! I suspect some flaw on the part of the goblin-made bow was the cause. Mestoph took the title, even after having drunk a potion transforming him into a troll! This was a little disconcerting at first, but he was not alone in that regard, and it quickly became the new normal. I even found myself calling him Trollstoph. By now, we’d determined we’d been taken to some other plane of existence. I’m sure Ranger’s expertise would have come in handy here, but he was off doing something else, so we had to muddle through as best we could. So, from the village we proceeded to the great wall, which our goblin elder told us had stood for hundreds of years. Here we engaged in honorable combat with another goblin village, their numbers bolstered by the other half of our party of adventurers. This battle seemed to be some kind of ceremony on the part of these goblins, taken part in with joyous hearts, with the victors raising the vanquished back to life for the post-combat feast. I imagine my gods would approve of these goblins. Battle was joined. I’d thought we would have a fairly typical bridge battle at the gap in the wall, but with both sides hurling boulders at each other, a shield wall proved impractical, so a looser skirmish line became necessary. We acquitted ourselves well, but the other side was victorious. As promised, we were raised, and brought to the communal tavern for the feast. I have to admit, at least on that plane, goblin cuisine wasn’t too bad, though I imagine I don’t want to dwell too much on what it consists of or how it’s prepared. Sadly for me, I was just beginning to partake when I was again transported to another place, a pitch-black chamber with a cold stone floor, along with about a half-dozen other adventurers. There, a voice told the tale of the spirit of luck, who had almost been in the right place at the right time to prevent the adversary from trickling into that plane of existence, but also being the spirit of freedom, she could not bring herself to curtail him. The voice then asked if we were lucky, and tested our luck through the expedient of a simple deck of cards. Each of us had seven chances to guess the next card. I guessed well on the third try, and found myself back in the tavern with another of those pieces of parchment. I was not alone in my experience, and from the pieces of parchment various adventurers brought back, a picture started to emerge of seven spirits or gods of the plane destroyed and absorbed by an intruding spirit. Contradictions in the natures of the native gods prevented them from opposing the intruder effectively, allowing him to pick them off one by one. Seeking guidance on how to proceed, we sought out the Oracle of the Lake. The Oracle told us we could each ask one question, the value of the answer depending on how deeply the questioner was willing to immerse him or herself into the lake. From this I discovered XT has surprisingly sexy legs, as he stripped his trousers off to go thigh-deep. Not to be outdone, Starmaw doffed her dress and fully immersed herself, which I found out when I turned around and was almost killed by an imp when I got distracted by her display of mighty bosoms. What? No, I won’t describe her bosoms in detail. What’s wrong with you? Did I mention there were imps? Foul, cackling creatures they were, and they kept pouring out of the woods, but through might of arms and spells we kept them at bay. Our troll-converted brethren proved their worth, smashing the foul things with thrown boulders, and I found them both susceptible to my combat spells and unable to cross my Circle of Protection. I thus took part in the defense as Janus, Starmaw, and Kallen coordinated obtaining the information we needed to proceed. Learning what we could from the Oracle, we pushed on, battling our way through never-ending waves of imps as we made our way to a village of surprisingly friendly and helpful kobolds. They aided us in attuning to the natural magic of the plane, and told us how to harvest the essence of slain imps so we might apply that raw magic to defeating the adversary and restoring balance to the plane. As night fell, we set out to harvest essence from the infestation of imps. We flailed ineffectually until we smartened up and moved to a defensible position at the edge of the field. Nonetheless, we managed, filling the vessels and returning to the tavern, wherein waited the kobold shaman to further advise us. From the tavern, we divided into groups and the kobolds led us to a series of arcane contraptions we had to puzzle out the workings of. I’m not ashamed to admit I and my companions took quite some time working out how to use the bizarre devices, finally having to resort to divination magic to understand the apparatus sufficiently to process the raw imp essence into...well, I’m not quite sure what it was – refined essence of one of the defeated gods, perhaps. Whatever it was, it was green, and we took it back to the inn. We were not the first to return, but far from the last, and each party’s refined essence was of a different color. Thus prepared, we marched forth to confront the adversary, attacking him in turns while flinging the essence upon him, in shifts depending on the color he was manifesting and we were as individuals attuned to. So was battle joined, the adversary – it was at this point I mentally dubbed him “the Rainbow King” – sending forth his minions in the vain attempt to overwhelm us. As his minions fell to our swords and spells, the Rainbow King took to the field himself, affording us the opportunity to attack him directly. No one attack was sufficient to fell him, but bit by bit, we wore him down, and as the sum of his many wounds took their toll, he began losing the manifestations of the aspects he’d wrested from the plane’s fallen gods. We collected these as they fell, and wielding the essence we’d collected and refined, we hurled the Rainbow King into defeat.
When the Rainbow King fell, figures appeared, spirit-potential waiting to be shaped into the new gods of the plane. We set out the half-sphere aspect manifestations we’d wrested from the usurper god and, to the best of our sometimes-limited reason, attempted to assign each spirit-potential with a pair of aspects that would not lumber them with the disastrous inability to act their predecessors had possessed.
Eventually, we empowered and named each of the spirit-manifestations but one, who was empowered but not named. I had the honor of empowering and naming one of them, granting him the aspects of Command and Morality and naming him The Captain, because command and morality should be the qualities of every good ship captain. The new gods ascended to their stations and we were sent back to our own plane, finding ourselves in a peaceful field under a half-moon. We parted and went our separate ways. As I returned to the Stormseeker, I couldn’t help but wonder about the plane we’d left and what we’d wrought. I wonder if fate will give us the chance to someday return to that plane and see how it fared under the gods we’d taken part in creating.
At the mine itself, the fighting was close. No place to be flinging around bolts of lightning, even if I could press my way far enough forward to do so. The fighters went to the front, led by the warriors of Grimloch. They cleared the mine so the rest of us could safely wriggle our way through the tight passages. I was just getting to the last chamber of the mine when we were transported to some other place. No, I’m not quite sure what happened, but I suspect those fragments of parchment I’d paid not much heed to earlier factored rather large. So, suddenly instead of being in a mine with the whole of our party, I found myself on a trail with half of it. The trail led to a village of goblins and trolls. Now, I’ve generally found goblins and trolls to be hostile menaces as well, but these creatures were quite personable. They quickly accepted us as “pink goblins” and inducted us into the Star and Moon tribe. We were invited to compete for positions of honor in an imminent battle-ceremony. I found myself competing for the title of high mage. I acquitted myself well with accuracy with magic missiles, but archery proved my undoing, literally shooting myself in the foot! I suspect some flaw on the part of the goblin-made bow was the cause. Mestoph took the title, even after having drunk a potion transforming him into a troll! This was a little disconcerting at first, but he was not alone in that regard, and it quickly became the new normal. I even found myself calling him Trollstoph. By now, we’d determined we’d been taken to some other plane of existence. I’m sure Ranger’s expertise would have come in handy here, but he was off doing something else, so we had to muddle through as best we could. So, from the village we proceeded to the great wall, which our goblin elder told us had stood for hundreds of years. Here we engaged in honorable combat with another goblin village, their numbers bolstered by the other half of our party of adventurers. This battle seemed to be some kind of ceremony on the part of these goblins, taken part in with joyous hearts, with the victors raising the vanquished back to life for the post-combat feast. I imagine my gods would approve of these goblins. Battle was joined. I’d thought we would have a fairly typical bridge battle at the gap in the wall, but with both sides hurling boulders at each other, a shield wall proved impractical, so a looser skirmish line became necessary. We acquitted ourselves well, but the other side was victorious. As promised, we were raised, and brought to the communal tavern for the feast. I have to admit, at least on that plane, goblin cuisine wasn’t too bad, though I imagine I don’t want to dwell too much on what it consists of or how it’s prepared. Sadly for me, I was just beginning to partake when I was again transported to another place, a pitch-black chamber with a cold stone floor, along with about a half-dozen other adventurers. There, a voice told the tale of the spirit of luck, who had almost been in the right place at the right time to prevent the adversary from trickling into that plane of existence, but also being the spirit of freedom, she could not bring herself to curtail him. The voice then asked if we were lucky, and tested our luck through the expedient of a simple deck of cards. Each of us had seven chances to guess the next card. I guessed well on the third try, and found myself back in the tavern with another of those pieces of parchment. I was not alone in my experience, and from the pieces of parchment various adventurers brought back, a picture started to emerge of seven spirits or gods of the plane destroyed and absorbed by an intruding spirit. Contradictions in the natures of the native gods prevented them from opposing the intruder effectively, allowing him to pick them off one by one. Seeking guidance on how to proceed, we sought out the Oracle of the Lake. The Oracle told us we could each ask one question, the value of the answer depending on how deeply the questioner was willing to immerse him or herself into the lake. From this I discovered XT has surprisingly sexy legs, as he stripped his trousers off to go thigh-deep. Not to be outdone, Starmaw doffed her dress and fully immersed herself, which I found out when I turned around and was almost killed by an imp when I got distracted by her display of mighty bosoms. What? No, I won’t describe her bosoms in detail. What’s wrong with you? Did I mention there were imps? Foul, cackling creatures they were, and they kept pouring out of the woods, but through might of arms and spells we kept them at bay. Our troll-converted brethren proved their worth, smashing the foul things with thrown boulders, and I found them both susceptible to my combat spells and unable to cross my Circle of Protection. I thus took part in the defense as Janus, Starmaw, and Kallen coordinated obtaining the information we needed to proceed. Learning what we could from the Oracle, we pushed on, battling our way through never-ending waves of imps as we made our way to a village of surprisingly friendly and helpful kobolds. They aided us in attuning to the natural magic of the plane, and told us how to harvest the essence of slain imps so we might apply that raw magic to defeating the adversary and restoring balance to the plane. As night fell, we set out to harvest essence from the infestation of imps. We flailed ineffectually until we smartened up and moved to a defensible position at the edge of the field. Nonetheless, we managed, filling the vessels and returning to the tavern, wherein waited the kobold shaman to further advise us. From the tavern, we divided into groups and the kobolds led us to a series of arcane contraptions we had to puzzle out the workings of. I’m not ashamed to admit I and my companions took quite some time working out how to use the bizarre devices, finally having to resort to divination magic to understand the apparatus sufficiently to process the raw imp essence into...well, I’m not quite sure what it was – refined essence of one of the defeated gods, perhaps. Whatever it was, it was green, and we took it back to the inn. We were not the first to return, but far from the last, and each party’s refined essence was of a different color. Thus prepared, we marched forth to confront the adversary, attacking him in turns while flinging the essence upon him, in shifts depending on the color he was manifesting and we were as individuals attuned to. So was battle joined, the adversary – it was at this point I mentally dubbed him “the Rainbow King” – sending forth his minions in the vain attempt to overwhelm us. As his minions fell to our swords and spells, the Rainbow King took to the field himself, affording us the opportunity to attack him directly. No one attack was sufficient to fell him, but bit by bit, we wore him down, and as the sum of his many wounds took their toll, he began losing the manifestations of the aspects he’d wrested from the plane’s fallen gods. We collected these as they fell, and wielding the essence we’d collected and refined, we hurled the Rainbow King into defeat.
When the Rainbow King fell, figures appeared, spirit-potential waiting to be shaped into the new gods of the plane. We set out the half-sphere aspect manifestations we’d wrested from the usurper god and, to the best of our sometimes-limited reason, attempted to assign each spirit-potential with a pair of aspects that would not lumber them with the disastrous inability to act their predecessors had possessed.
Eventually, we empowered and named each of the spirit-manifestations but one, who was empowered but not named. I had the honor of empowering and naming one of them, granting him the aspects of Command and Morality and naming him The Captain, because command and morality should be the qualities of every good ship captain. The new gods ascended to their stations and we were sent back to our own plane, finding ourselves in a peaceful field under a half-moon. We parted and went our separate ways. As I returned to the Stormseeker, I couldn’t help but wonder about the plane we’d left and what we’d wrought. I wonder if fate will give us the chance to someday return to that plane and see how it fared under the gods we’d taken part in creating.