A day passes.
Lani reforms, and returns.
Lani goes to Krikksland to see if she can chat to Krikk. Krikk isn’t here just yet. Apparently Jishnu really doesn’t look very happy.
Thora is updated regarding the situation (Leo tells her). Thora wants to chat to the party before we do any more silly things.
After a while Krikk arrives, at which point Lani is admitted to the camp. When shown to Krikk, Thora is already there – it seems as though Thora didn’t wait before deciding to chat to Krikk.
Oh, Grey’s head is on a pike. And only Grey’s head – Lani’s isn’t on a pike.
In her earlier discussion with Krikk, Thora has indicated to Krikk where Maximus can be brought back to life (unfortunate consequence of the unnecessary hostilities). Thora has also (apparently) arranged for the return of the spoils of war.
When asked by Lani,, Krikk claims she never intended to attack Sind (but Lani feels that she is lying).
Lani enters into negotiations for the return of her magic items. They’ll return them at the cost of half market value. They’ll also return her body (not corpse) as a gesture of good faith.
They will take nine days to do the identifies on Lani’s nine items. Thus, a meeting between the two parties is to be held in Krikksland in nine days time.
What’s left of the party return to Serraine.
The party has a chat. Discussion turns to finding out what Grey wants, or maybe resurrecting him. However, it isn’t clear how the party might actually talk to him.
Tess raises the possibility of applying political pressure to Slagovich, to get them to apply pressure to the mercenaries to stop aiding Krikk. A war with Sind could adversely influence Slagovich’s trade with Sind.
The party decides to find Turia. They get Nemon to cast a sending to Turia, but the sending fails.
Thora casts the runes, and tells the party that she believes Turia is in Limbo. Thora doesn’t know if this is because she is dead or looking for Grey.
The party discusses more about what to do about getting Turia and Grey. They decide to ask a priest of Hades (an old and decrepit one) to try to raise Grey and Turia. It fails on Grey (he does not want to return), and Turia is not dead.
Lani gets pissed off that Grey hasn’t told her his agenda.
The party discusses the possibility of going to Limbo. Many are hesitant about doing so, especially Thora. The entire party decides to go.
Spells are memorised, and Thora casts True Resurrection.
On arriving in Limbo, the party is presented with a sea of waving grass. Nearby are five large minotaur-like demons. Just prior to combat beginning, Turia pops up and says “hey.” Seems the demons are relatively friendly. Turia doesn’t know why sending didn’t work to her.
Turia has Grey with her – well, his spirit. He seems out of it.
The party looks for a way out of Limbo. Thora tries Find the Path, and it seems to work. Two hours later, the party arrives at a depression, within which is a circle of stones. Next to the stones is a shady shape, lurking. It seems to bow. Apparently Turia lost a demon to one of the shady things.
Turia and a demon are wounded. Turia looks very tired.
Turia takes Grey through the gate, and everyone else leaves. On the other side, we appear in the Cage. Grey is alive and well.
We return to Mystara, and go chat to the Rajahirajah. We update him on events. The idea of applying political pressure seems to be a good one. The Rajahirajah will send someone with us to help out in this regard.
Tess postulates that maybe Krikk wishes to convert his peasant army into soldiers of ice (into golems – see Tess’ report).
(general notes)
Levels of Ranks:
Emperor
King
Prince/Grand Duke/Margrave/Maharajah
Duke/Rajah
Jarl/Count/Earl/Margrave (some countries)
Viscount
Baron
Knight/Baronet
We purchase back some of our equipment from Krikk.
We meet the diplomatic advisor, Yashsudra. We introduce ourselves informally, and have a chat.
Slagovich is one of the foremost city states in the gulf of Hule, and is ruled by Margrave Miosz II. Slagovich is in a militarily poor position: Hule has tried to conquer it in the past, and the other city states are not pleased with it being the gateway of trade to the east. The other city states have attempted to invade Slagovich in the past.
He cautions us that the Rajahirajah is not prepared to mount an invasion of Slagovich, but we could make it appear as though we might.
He knows that the ruler has the support of the Knights of Halav, the quasi-military religious group that is primarily responsible for the defence of Slagovich. Halav is a warrior deity whose primary enemies are humanoids.
We tell him of our undead status, but he feels that that is not relevant to the situation. It is the consequences to Slagovich which is important.
Lani sets up a gate near Slagovich, and we, together with 50 honour guard mounted on heavy war horses, rock up.
On short order we are shown to the Margrave, to who Grey tells, without wasting time, what the problem is. The Margrave and his men are led off, and later returns with two people, a kind of cleric perhaps (male), and a women in her mid thirties. The woman is Commander Katchin, and the male is Lieutenant Lopez Kovas. The individuals are representatives of the Band of the Blue Eye. We have a chat, but generally don’t get far with respect to convincing them of the “evil of their ways”. They indicate that it is those on the plateau who are to be attacked, and they can’t say what Krikk might do after that.
We go off and have individual chats left right and centre, and do various aspects of back-door politicking. Lieutenant Lopez Kovas has a chat with Lani and Zim, asking various mundane questions. The Margrave’s advisor, Sir Stavros, leader of the Knights of Halav, also has a chat with the party.
After reconvening after a break, the Company of the Blue Eye have a third representative: Jishnu.
Jishnu suggests that we could have observers stationed there, to ensure the company does not train soldiers who might invade Sind. In addition, he suggests we could hire him at the end of his contract, in a few months time.
This seems like a reasonable option. The cost is 6000gp per month of non-combat duty; double that during combat, and 1000gp per year to be held on as retainers.
We retire for the night (after some feasting).
We put the mercenaries on retainership. We also get to place three observers in the camp [OOC: Grey gets Tess to arrange this].
We start looking into getting Minora back. First destination: The Cage. We end up in Tensar’s employment services. It seems he is an intermediary for hiring people for jobs, such as hunting Red Slaadi in Limbo.
We sign up, in case any interesting jobs come along, and then head off to the Hall of Information. We make an appointment to see the Priest Registry, at a cost of 5sp.
We indicate we wish to speak to a priest of Petra. There are three on the (voluntary) registry. The first is in prison for murder, the second is in the Golden Barrier Inn, and the third lives in Greengage.
We go to Greengage first. There are groups of people sitting on the curb drinking. The door is sized for small people – the ceiling is 4’6” tall. The inside is filled with gnomes and halflings.
We find the person we’re looking for, one Traessa. We also order some of their cider, which is the best we’ve ever had, and the strongest. Unfortunately, there’s a limit on how many ciders one can have per day.
Traessa does a divination for us, for free, and gets: “Down, not up”.
We get Leo to do a more powerful divination. He finds out that Arni and Minora went to Baratkand, but from there they went down.
Since we’re here, we decide to go to the Hall of Information again, but this time to see if we can find out about the drow and their creators. We book in to speak to the non-planar races commission, and the prime material planes relations registrars.
We ask at the Hall for information on drow and illithid, but only get generic information. We decide to return to Mystara.
Grey sends for the palace engineer, and inquires about what lies underneath the palace. Unfortunately, there’s only meant to be bedrock.
We shop around for a scroll of discern location. We buy one from a random mage in Serraine, and then cast it, trying to find Arni. The result: nothing.
We summon some Xorns at Grey’s palace, and send them to scout for hollow spaces. They find none.
They’re probably in the Hollow World.
We decide to return to the Falcon for now. At the moment they’re preparing for a sneaky raid. They’ve found an outpost, or town perhaps, of the illithid. They snuck in and found they had some slaves, but then they got caught. They killed the illithid that found them. They then followed some more of their ships, and found a larger place, some sort of diamond-like chunk of rock with more of the illithid ships attached. They then followed ships from this base, and found that the illithid and the shapechanging creatures are fighting one another. They’re going to sneak in and find out what the heck’s going on, and maybe join in if they can.
They have seen no humans out here.
They also found out about the powerful illithid we fought. Most mind flayers are degenerate versions of the powerful illithid, which are known as the first ones.
Thorhilde covers herself in some sort of goo, a sort of thin skin which covers her entire body, and acts as a sort of chameleon skin. It’s magical, but is less effective if anything is worn.
The shapeshifters appear to be losing.
In this raid, Thorhilde and Finn will head in first. 15 minutes later, a second group (thugs) will be heading in. We become the second battlegroup.
Apparently, by now, the knights are aware of the fact that some of us are undead – they don’t seem to mind, not now anyway. Also, the Heldannic ships can keep themselves invisible by casting darkness around the ship.
We transfer over to one of the Heldannic ships, and cram ourselves into a sort of light assault ship.
We see the target: another diamond-shaped chunk of rock, with a crystal-like dome on top. The crystal dome has a gaping hole in it, frost rimming its edges.
Heading in: Thorhilde, Finn, Grey, Lani, Zim, Turia, Roland, Safranna, Dame Klein, Sir Wolf, Sir Keller, Sir Braun, and Brother Chaplain Meyer.
It’s freezing inside. We put on cold weather gear.
Thorhilde and Finn find some sort of jungle within, although it’s all frozen over and dead. It’s been dead for a while.
They find a way down, and get past a door into find their way into a warm underground complex. The doors are of recent construction.
The rest of us start heading in.
Thorhilde continues to report back (via Rary’s telepathic bond) (Finn trails from a distance). They’ve spotted a humanoid of some sort – not one they recognise. Thorhilde and Finn follow the humanoid, and end up finding another seven. They seem to be repairing something. They are armed. They are all humanoid(ish), but are generally very dissimilar.
We decide to sneak up, with the goal being to take out the humanoids, hopefully quietly (ie, no boomy spells). They appear to be some sort of snake-like creatures – some are mostly human looking, others much less so. We defeat them easily. They’re Yuan-ti, purebloods and abominations.
We take two prisoners.