Mediums and Messages

Eyes Unclouded - Sessions 22 - 24

Midterm season really got to me this quarter, so I'm catching up on three sessions of our ongoing Studio Ghibli-inspired Cairn game. You can find our last session here.

Session 22: One Last Stop in Eleutheria

Having just left their audience with the Cat King of Eleutheria, the party contemplated their next steps. They were:

And they were accompanied by:

The Cat King had mentioned that his court wizard, Merlina, had been conducting experiments on the mysterious black ooze seeping from the woods due west. The king's guards led the party through the castle to her study.

Merlina the Crow was busy at work in a tower chamber filled with dangling charms, alchemical apparatus, and a single swing in the middle of the room. She greeted the party warmly enough, and they quickly jumped into questions about the ooze:

To test this last theory, September volunteered to try handling the goo. Merlina coated the squirrel in magical armor. Before anyone could stop them, September picked up some of the ooze from a nearby specimen dish and tried to eat it. The barrier worked, but not against ingestion. The squirrel quickly hacked up the ooze, feeling sick and drained from the contact.

The party suggested they could use a magical boat to safely traverse the ooze. Merlina suggested that she could transform someone into a boat, but she couldn't summon one. Ambrose volunteered and turned into a little rowboat before Merlina reversed the spell, sparking a new fascination with becoming inanimate objects.

September asked if Merlina would be willing to share these spells. The wizard said no; she only taught magic to those who had demonstrated responsibility as part of an apprenticeship. She did, however, agree to travel with the party on their important mission to contact Fyrir and halt the spread of corruption.

Session 23: Into the Woods Inverted

The party set off without delay. September fell asleep with the nap stone for a while. They were:

And they were accompanied by:

After discussing a few possible routes, the party decided to head directly west toward the inverted version of Eirnos' grove. The journey was expected to take about four days.

Marching along a fairly mundane forest trail on the first day, the party encountered a large party of giant ground wasps gathering logs and rooting around in the dirt. They tried to sneak by undetected but failed when Sir Percius exclaimed in surprise. The party managed to escape when Nanaki cast Silent Image to conjure an illusory flame, masking their retreat.

At dusk, they arrived at the bank of an uncanny river, milky white and flowing south to north. Clumps of reeds, lily pads, and other river flora bobbed in the fast current. From a nearby rise, they saw a strange wooden bridge spanning the river.

A Cursed Crossing?

The party immediately recognized the bridge as out of place. It was made from lumber not matching the trees of the Woods Inverted and seemed to be of an ancient design. A wooden tower stood on each bank, connected by wide rope bridges. The middle was supported by a barge-like platform with a bronze plate set in the center. Ambrose recognized this structure from some of his research into the history of Wealdstone. A bridge out of time?

They decided to investigate rather than camp for the night. Madrigal threw a stick onto the bridge. When nothing happened, she snuck out onto it. As soon as she did, shadowy figures began to loom on the far side, visible only to her. She backpedaled and shared her findings with the group.

Madrigal and Sir Percius decided to hang back to keep watch while the others figured out the bridge situation (their players needing to leave for another commitment).

Ambrose asked Merlina to turn him into a telescope. The wizard shrugged and obliged. The party winched tele-Ambrose up onto the tower on the near side of the river to scan the crossing. They saw two things.

First, the bronze plate was inscribed:

THIS BRIDGE WAS KEPT BY AEFERWIC
HE STOOD WHERE NAMES ARE HEAVY

HE ASKED WHO YOU WERE
AND WHO WOULD SPEAK FOR YOU

THE MOTHERS GAVE HIM THE WORDS
HE GAVE THE WORDS TO THE STONE

SPEAK AS AEFERWIC LISTENED
OR PASS AS ONE UNREMEMBERED

Second, they saw a human-scale blue jay in the far tower. This was Wesk, the missing scout from Eleutheria. They called out to him and exchanged greetings. He said he had accidentally flown into some rocks due west, then walked back here. He warned that the bridge was cursed. If you went halfway out, a ghost would challenge you.

The party spent a significant amount of time puzzling over the inscription, the curse, and how exactly to attempt the crossing. They eventually settled on the following plan: they would each cross one at a time, introduce themselves to the ghost, and say that the Cat King would vouch for them. They figured that the Cat King was old or magical enough that his word would count to the crossing guard.

And so they did. As each party member crossed onto the central float, they disappeared from the Woods Inverted, arriving in a shadowy version of ancient Wealdstone. There, a specter demanded to know who they were and who would speak for them. They answered, and the specter respectfully stepped aside for them to pass.

After the party members, Merlina passed through as well, using the same script. Then Ismene crossed. She disappeared into the middle platform. Moments passed, then minutes. She hadn't come out the far side.

Flame went back to get her, returning to the center of the bridge and asking the bridge warden where Ismene had gone. The specter simply said she had arrived but could not pass. Flame vouched for the wizard. The specter considered this and said, "Then you are responsible for her actions in these woods." The fire elemental returned to the west bank, and Ismene emerged alongside.

Back on dry land, an argument broke out. The party chastised Ismene for somehow messing up the bridge interaction. Ismene shrugged this off. She was thankful for the help but didn't feel particularly beholden to a cursed bridge-keeper. As she put it, you don't owe anything to the lock that you open to enter your house.

Furthermore, the wizard warned that the party should be ready to transgress more boundaries, magical or moral, on the road ahead. They needed to stop the corruption affecting the land, and that was unlikely to happen without some kind of conflict.

Session 24: Further West

Wesk lowered a rope ladder from his tower and invited the party up to spend the night. The party climbed up to join him:

And they were accompanied by:

Wesk shared what he had seen in the surrounding countryside before getting injured. Directly due west was a rocky outcropping with a colossal stone wolf at the top. Due southwest—perhaps a slightly easier path in terms of ooze and swamp—was some sort of mine or construction site nestled in an old Mal-Aqat ruin. In either case, the ground got swampier and more filled with corrupting ooze the farther west you went.

September took watch, using telescope-Ambrose to scan the surrounding woodlands. They noticed a gleaming silver nest in the top of a tree some 100 feet away due west but decided to wait until morning to investigate. The squirrel druid also cast Cure Wounds to mend Wesk's broken wing. Otherwise, the night passed without incident, though a rainstorm rolled in that would make the going treacherous the next day.

The next morning, Wesk and September flew ahead to check out the silver nest. Inside, they found two precious, gem-encrusted eggs. Wesk tried to take one but heard an alarmed squawk from the canopy above. A silver raven dive-bombed them from above.

September quickly cast Dispel Magic, unravelling whatever spirit animated the metal bird and sending it hurtling into the brush without incident. The party collected the eggs and gave them to Nanaki for safekeeping. September was struck with a moral quandary: did they just murder that bird? Ismene unhelpfully explained that some living creatures were made of flesh while others were made of magic, but the question of what counts as a being was more a question of philosophy than thaumaturgy.

Wasp Warnings

Merlina transformed Ambrose back into a human, then into a mask for Nanaki to wear, and the party set out. They travelled through increasingly swampy terrain, mud clinging to their boots as they traipsed from one swatch of high ground to the next. Pools of ooze floated atop the fetid water, sometimes in pearls, sometimes in flat slicks.

Shortly after noon, the party heard footsteps behind them. September spotted a torch burning on the path. They flew back and met two giant ground wasps. One was carrying a torch. The wasps asked if September was traveling with any two-legged beings. The squirrel prevaricated but agreed to bring the wasps back to the party to introduce them.

Nanaki hid with Ambrose and Ismene. Wesk and Merlina waited to meet the wasps. They said they had no names but were here to deliver this torch as a message to the party of adventurers who had burned down their home in the Cat King's garden. With a flat affect, they shared that they had been sent by the Queen of Wasps and that their houses would be burned down in return.

Conversation with the wasps revealed that they had no names and seemed to live for a single job. One was a messenger and one was a carrier. The party convincingly argued that they weren't the adventurers the wasps were looking for (most of them weren't even there at the time) but said they would be happy to tell the wasps if they found them. The wasps shared that they had a nest buried under a burnt-out farmhouse due south.

Scaling the Rock!

By late afternoon, the party arrived at the edge of a sea of ooze and suppurating water. Only the occasional tree poked above the waterline. The rain had decreased to a slight drizzle, revealing the huge rock Wesk had spoken of. It was 200 feet tall, tapering toward a jagged point, with a flat platform emerging from its summit like a thumb from a hand. At that point, the form of a rough statue of a reclining wolf was visible.

The party discussed various means of summiting the rock. Eventually, Ambrose asked Merlina to transform him into a dirigible. They figured out how to turn him into a simple vehicle that could carry Ismene and Nanaki while September, Wesk, and Merlina towed it through the air.

When they arrived, they found a cave mouth burrowing into the side of the rock—deep enough that the light didn't reach its interior. Merlina transformed Ambrose back into a human while Wesk and September scouted ahead. Nanaki took out her masonry tools and improved the statue.

Inside, Wesk heard the sounds of low breathing, maybe from two creatures. It was too dark to make out much without a torch. He retreated. September wild-shaped into a bat and flew forward. With their echolocation, they got a sense of the shape of the cavern and of two sleeping wolves nestled in a huge pile of thatch and other odds and ends. Bones of large game were scattered around the floor.

September also found one nook that their echolocation couldn't penetrate. In the dark, they could barely make out skeletal human remains lying on a stone plinth. A rucksack leaned against the stone nearby. They tried to fly closer to investigate and bounced hard off an illusory wall. They barely remained conscious after ramming into it headlong.

Undeterred, the druid wheeled around and cast Dispel Magic. The magic barrier shattered into invisible, fractal shards. The sound of the clattering fragments was enough to wake the two wolves, which rose with a growl. Black ooze dripped from them as they lurched unsteadily forward.

GM Notes

Well, a lot has happened over the last few sections. Travel with our group feels like it has taken on a real episode-of-the-week quality—they explore one location thoroughly and maybe have one social encounter along the way.

Ambrose has started really exploring being turned into various inanimate objects. This is a happy but unintentional overlap with the Teleopath class I wrote recently. It's also a good opportunity for Cairn's Growth system to come into play. What does Ambrose learn by repeatedly becoming an inanimate object? Do they want to learn how to do this for themselves, and if so, how do they transform back?

The bridge location was a returning site from our game of The Quiet Year a few sessions back. For what was a relatively truncated section in the write-up, the players spent a good long time thinking through possible solutions, probing the site, and figuring out what the lore and setting implications were for this bridge being here in the Woods Inverted.

The players have a strong suspicion that the skeletal remains they just found are the body of Alfiann Yve, though only September has directly observed them so far. If true, that sets up a big cliffhanger for next session, assuming they aren't routed by the wolves.

September wasn't quite at risk of dying, but they were very close! They only have a single HP and 6 Strength. One good hit could be lethal next session!

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