The group begins in Emerald, training. Rigby finishes early, a problem he's working on, ok? With his time, he summons a familiar- he seeks a chaotic good pseudodragon, a very rare breed indeed.

The incantation wears on his tiny vocal cords, and by the middle of the day he feels the magic working- it seems he can feel a bond, and as the bond draws stronger, it snaps. He can sense what's breaking it- something around his neck, the obvious suspect being the lodestone of time inviolate. He gives up for the day, beginning anew on the morn, after complaining about it at dinner with his team.

The next day, he puts the lodestone to his side before beginning, and his companions head out, new techniques in their heads, with the need to practice them. He begins the same chants, and Morgrim, Alenka, Keichi, and Lithonian head to the southern park, where they begin practicing multiperson drills and fast counters to enemy casters.

While training in the southern park, Keichi is approached by a group of members of the House of the Blood Moon. Two of them are monks, but their leader, Rotaken Denshaan, is dressed in a manner of a warrior. He has heard that Keichi has the door, and demands its immediate return. Keichi refuses. However, at just that moment, the ritual Rigby is working on summons his familiar! Or rather, summons the party to the familiar, who is located in the distant future.

The party finds themselves summoned by a haggard young woman, her green eyes scared and hopeful, her friends encased in spider webs with a metallic sheen. There are several creatures not encased in these spider webs- mostly giant mechanical spiders, but also a tall man, wearing ancient robes, with defensive spells visibly cast on him (blur, displacement), a cruel look on his face. Facing him is the woman, her pseudodragon friend, and a person wearing a suit of green metal armor- but the suit is being encased by spider webs as the PCs arrive, despite the augmented strength it grants to the wearer. The tall man gloats, claiming in a pidgen Arcatan that his mechanical spiders are the strongest in all of Arcata- nay, in all of Caligo! The battle is quickly joined, and the PCs beat the spiders inside out- while the spiders are fierce and damaging, and have a jump attack that really should stretch the suspension of disbelief, they are no match from the "Hee-ross dawn of time, hee-ross age of hope, age of lost-but-will-be-again!" and feeblemind the maniacal mechaspider mage after pulping his creation.

Viztria, the pseudodragon, is super glad to meet Rigby, who clearly has access to superior wines from, in her mind, a superior time. And is also magically bound to her, so, there's that. She grew up near the remains of a library, shielding the few remaining books from danger. She doesn't know anything about the history that links her past to that of Rigby, but she also doesn't care. She does know how to cook a pretty great omelette, and she knows a bunch of novels that haven't been written yet, but history wasn't present and isn't super interesting to her, and the mysterious woman (whose spells Morgrim believes represent much greater control over the earth element than is seen in present day, but also much less power) didn't explain much except to dismiss a question about the future, explaining that Morgrim didn't really grasp causality or determinism, and that this was but one of many of his futures, but his past was singular for her. She follows this vague correction up by begging for any loot, saying that magic item are much more common for their time. The PCs donate some scrolls and a copper ball, because hell, why not, and are quickly whisked back to their proper time, leaving unanswered the question of how the number of stars multiplied a thousandfold.

Where Rotaken challenges him to a duel. Keichi accepts the duel, throwing down the totem and then critting the living fucking shit out his opponent, also a Stalker, and defeating him insanely quickly. In awe, the cowed Pallian vows to bring word of his power back to the monestary, and bring word of his retrieval of the green door and the ancient pot. Keichi shows Rotaken the use of the door, but instead of the familiar "triangle guy", there is one with green reptilian skin, explaining that their normal merchant has been temporarily discorporated, and points out that he is specially bred to both cheat and lie. He is fond of cheating, but is also enamored of lying, saying all manner of obviously false things. He offers Keichi a set of vials of neutralize poison that also give you back a 1st level spell.
(the first level spell it gives you is "Dispel Stolen Poison We Will Be Exposed To On The Third Week Of Zenith", but no one asked him that)
A bit freaked, Keichi leaves. He must not love cheating as the eyeless reptile faced merchant does!

The party finishes training and begins seeking Narso. Alenka's contacts point her to Eldeth Seerens, an alchemist who has done work for the thieves guild in the past. Upon confronting him, he demands safe passage out, and confesses to making special concoctions for the thieves guild- things that COULD be used to make an exceptionally exotic poison, a mind affecting one. Alenka also learns of a recent robbery of a thiev's guild safehouse- a safe bet that this was Narso's work.

Octessa's apprentices tell the group of news- there was a witness, a small orphan child, to Octessa's murder, and that his memory of the event has been extracted (err, he still has it- copied?) and turned into a Verzix experience. The party arrives, resists the weak urgings of the Verzix, gets scolded by the operator, and finally some experience it. They see Octessa leave a friend's apartment, walk down an alley, and they hear the tinkling of glass. Narso appears in front of her, his sword attuned for an assassination attempt, and she attempts to cast, failing. As Narso moves in she instantly whips out a second distintegrate spell (likely contigent), as Narso attacks. The spell hits him, but not fatally, though he is badly wounded. His blow is mostly avoided, but draws some blood. She dies instantly, and Narso concentrates, drawing her soul into his sword. A moment later, Narso dodges a dimensional anchored dagger, drinking a teleport potion rather than face the Night Cloak.

The team finds the safehouse which was robbed- in the process of being "serviced". There is a message waiting, in blood, on the walls, from Narso:
"Night Cloak, this is the blood of Sandrella, the innocent, your precious rescued oracle. I talked with her before she died.
She told me much, as her death was slow."

The thieves guild pumps an aerosol poison in, not knowing what exactly is going on, and Keichi solves that with some ethereal walking, combined with the old pocket-pixie-sorcerer trick, which results in the equipment going up in fire rather quickly. The thieves disperse, and Rigby and Morgrim explain themselves to the wizards of Zem tower, who are super thrilled to have a subterranean wizard and a chaotic pixie blowing the fuck out of their town.

Asking Octessa's apprentices, who have volunteered their services for bitchwork like this, the PCs learn that oracles were people who could speak the future- divinely inspired- and that the gods made a pact to no longer give out the oracular gift a very long time ago. Unanswered, sadly, are questions like "was she a real oracle", "where was she", "how did Narso find out", and "what link does this all have to the thieves guild and/or the night cloak".

Ash, quite sick of playing by the rules, consults Latukefu, praying for divine knowledge. Latukefu answers his divination personally, and Ash finds that Narso is UNDER Emerald, or has been recently, as well as the veracity of Sandrella's status as an oracle.

The PCs check in with the door, finding that their normal ("normal") extradimensional merchant is back, with his three items to sell. He explains that a realm at the edge of the field spun by Caligo had been used as a base for his people, but that the same outsiders who had extinguished so very much life had found a way in, but had been repelled with the help of Latukefu, Kulah, Henaro, Kysum, and Caelum. Happy with this knowledge, they strike a bargain for an unusual service- to twist the soul of Rim-Thul such that it cannot be resurrected. Unable to comply without destroying the soul, he is able to (for the cost of a few evil souls) twist in such a way that it would take time to "unwind"- anywhere from a month to five years.

With enough clues, and a fucked-up soul to bargain with, they go back to the theatre, following along the path that Narso took the very first time. I want to point out that this was VERY clever- I was almost sure you guys would go in from the Verzix side of things. The tripwire alarm was not as well designed as on the Verzix side, but Alenka sadly (or amusingly) failed to find it, and Narso and his minions were warned. They hid in tiles in the ceiling, his narrow passage allowing him to use the aerosol poison secretly and quickly. Narso at first offered to trade the soul of Octessa for the A fast wind wall prevented the worst of the effects, and the PCs began smashing the barbarian and two rogues who hopped out of the ceiling. Narso, who was assuming that his poison would stop the casters just as effectively as it had Octessa, ended up running away rapidly whilst Rigby tried to pelt him with dimensional anchor a whole shit lot. Eventually Narso was forced to drink a teleport potion.

The teleport was later traced to Aprem, in southern Miara, but the trail was cold when the wizards from Zem tower began searching the area. He didn't teleport again, but Aprem is a port town, a center of trade, and somewhat far from the influence of Zem Tower.

There are still ghost plants, and there's still the matter of Voriph.

It's Zenith 24th. Pretty typical Axe Day, you know.

Nice recap. That was a fun last session, despite the assclown's escape. Looking forward to tonight.

I know this isn't the exact picture that Zem mentioned on Saturday, but I still like it.

I missed the bit about green armor.


I hate you.


I hate you.


I hate you.


I hate you... but in this case I wasn't listening to any of this because I wasn't there. This actually sounds fairly amusing from a DM perspective.


No, recall that was the illusion of a dragon. It's possible I used a fireball first to destroy the stuff blocking the door first, but there was definitely an angry gold dragon.


Ok, technically they were supposed to be yes/no questions. We didn't get another other than yes/no until the very last question.


Back to just hating you.


"Loathing" might be a better word at this point.



Some questions for the group... I don't know if these spells exist, but I get a 6th level spell. I'm debating which one.

1: Fires of Purity - Buff for the fighters. Every melee attack you do deals an extra 13 points of damage (my level). If you are hit, that guy takes 13 points of damage per hit. You only take half damage from fire based attacks, and if you pass a save you take no damage. Buffs aren't great for sorcerers, but there are two and sometimes three of you who could benefit. Duration is 13 rounds. We'd need to roll spell resistance against someone who has that, which is annoying.

2: Ray of Light - Close range ray. Subject is blinded for 1d4 rounds. No save, but there is spell resistance.

3: Shadowy Grappler - Medium range, I create an illusionary thing that grapples and attempts to pin someone. There is a will save. If they fail the will save, my grapple check is +26. If they pass the will save, it's +13. It continues for 13 rounds. I assume the form counts as medium even though it doesn't say so. I'm leaning towards this one.

4: Disintegrate - You know what this one does. Straight damage, but I have a lot of shit that does damage.

5: Antimagic Field - You might be thinking this is an odd thing, but I'm wondering. My understand is that my invisibility is supernatural, I remain invisible and flying. I'm not sure how this would work exactly, but it is sort of a final defense that may come in handy.

I don't know if the first 3 exist yet.

Antimagic definitely blocks your invisibility. Su and Sp, and all spell effects are blocked by rules, and I tweak it a bit to get rid of obvious stupidities (by rules you can throw an Orb of Force through an AMF, which I don't like).

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/antimagicField.htm

For you, AMF is EXCEEDINGLY dangerous in many circumstances. At the same time, versus a powerful caster, it's almost an immunity. Since you can fly (I rule it tires you out doing so without magical enhancement, but over the course of a battle that won't matter), you have exceptional mobility with the AMF bubble. I think it's the most technically interesting and powerful, but will spend a decent number of battles in your back pocket, doing nothing at all.

The problem with Disintegrate is the touch attack and the fort save. Those two mean that there's a decent chance it does essentially nothing, and given your arrows... well, disintegrate is still great, but I don't think it's as important as it would be to the wizard. That being said, there's pretty much nothing you can't solve with enough disintegrate.

Ray of Light is amazing because of the forced blind. I'll have to review to make sure I'm ok with it- no-save blindness is often a win button, but it seems within budget for a 6th level spell.

The grappler spell is pretty good, but doesn't seem as shockingly effective as the others. I would say that Ray of Light will be way better for disabling opponents, but this might be better for grabbing a kill. Still, it's a pretty good shot of disabling an enemy caster, or at least forcing him to start spending actions to dim door and junk.

Fires sounds very nice. I think you or Morgrim should definitely consider it eventually (he would be even better with it- you won't need that many of them, and his caster level is more). I'm not sure if it's super great as a top tier spell- meaning, it doesn't really push the envelope or add new tricks to the team like Ray, Disintegrate, or AMF.

I'd vote for the grappler one, or the ray of light. Both sound awesome. I already have disintegrate (not that it's a reason for you to never take a spell, obviously). I could definitely look into spending some money to get myself the fires spell.

Yeah, the AMF was sort of a "let's keep things interesting" idea. A flying AMF strikes me an enormously funny. It's obviously not the thing to do around an archer.

Just so I understand it... I believe that I would lose my bonus to hit with my bow, but the sleep and memory loss arrows would still function normally so long as the target is outside the field. Right?

I was thinking the grappler was just a fantastic was of handling a caster. It's a pretty tough grapple check to beat. It's the equivalent of a 20th level fighter with a 22 strength (I think). Yes, it can be defeated by dim door, but then the caster will just have to do it again unless he wants to leave the fight.

My only concern with ray of light is the 50% probability of rolling a 1 on the d4. Yes, I did the math correctly.

Yes. While the arrows are classed as (Ex), I won't allow them to affect subjects inside an AMF. But if you fire them, or for that matter enchanted arrows, they will get the bonus as long as your target is outside the AMF (the rules aren't really clear on firing enchanted arrows, but they are clear that the enchanted bow doesn't act as enchanted whilst inside the bubble). Mostly players frown on enchanted arrows as you only get 50 for the price you'd pay for a bow of that plus, but if you want to be some kind of uber asshole, this option is available to you. But when I picture it, I picture Bouncing Halo Guy or something, for some reason.