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Beginning in Margraive Exxe's keep (Keep Thrinsa, though that never came up) on Consonance 40th, the crew begins by graciously accepting their reward for the combination of ogre-murdering and behind-the-scenes political favors- a small metal door, with some parts of it apparently being made of green metal, and others made of what appears to be a mostly uncorroded iron. Knowing that this door is some form of powerful magical item from a distant time, Rigby and Morgrim investigate preliminarily with detect magic. Keichi, on the other hand, cares not for its magical properties- only that he will almost assuredly be welcomed if he produced such a lost prize to his monestary.
The Margraive had made plans to have the magical door activated- in his employ he keeps a tinker, Yorren whose experience and wife's (Beth) limited magical talents allow him to craft items of great physical detail, and also to discern the use and functioning of magical items, as well as contract for their creation. Operating in the lowest depths of the keep, the party makes their way downward, and he greets them eagerly. Before they can begin work on the door, however, all eyes fly to the work bench: a partially completed miniature ornate box, with an interior resembling a dragon hoard. Small pearls bedot the work throughout, and Rigby comments "Wait, 'bedot' is a word?" Well yes little pixie, now it is. A moments thought reveals to the party that this is likely an early version, meant for gold dragons, of the same evil box that was previously meant for use upon silver dragons.
Plans of opening the door temporarily halted, the two plainly explain: it is an expensive commission, with the reward in part being a float-stone for the Margraive (the magical stone central to an airship, and rare to nonexistent outside of Voriphan control normally), and while they are sure that it will be part of a magical item eventually, they are unsure of what type, and have not seen to ask- his work, after all, while strong in craftsmanship, is still largely mundane. Eventually, Beth excuses herself, and Rigby follows, seeking to convince her of the evil of the box. He is not entirely successful in this, though the couple does agree to provide the party with all the information that they need to make contact with "Rim-Thul the Brave", or at least, the contact through whom he is being paid.
Back to the box! The group gathers in the Magical Experimentation Room, and through a spate of detect magics, discerns that the door has conjuration magic that attempts to periodically manifest- moments after, a brief pulse of abjuration wells up from the edges of the door, and the conjuration is swept away. Several seconds later, the process repeats. Focussing on the timing, Morgrim counterspells the abjuration as it wells up, allowing the door's conjuration magic to get to full strength. When it is, they quickly open it, at which moment it springs to slightly larger than the size of a man, and everyone but Ash piles through the door. His caution, of course, is rewarded by half an hour of boredom and a lack of XP. On the other side of the door lies a humanoid of alien origin- lacking all the features of a face, with a hood, but frozen in a dim amber light attached to a small thin device with a broad base on what appears to be a desk. Exploring the area, they find that "height" as a concept, is sort of fucked- it is largely impossible to judge, and does not behave properly, though nonflyers percieve pretty much everything as the same. The area stretches out to the back, and has passageways, locked goods, and is clearly quite dark. Beyond the door is a vast void- nothing exists past there, and no one runs any experiments with such a border. Exploring behind reveals a Greegleken, a somewhat insectoid beast that rears up to a decent, not exactly expressable, height, which immediately begins attacking the heroes with its massive bite and 8 small clawed "legs", which it extends from its undercarapace. The team swings into action, weakening and damaging it. It regenerates, because how could something this horrible not do that? At one point, it even spews spores that weaken all the heroes. The pixie, recognizing something that seems barely sentient, begins blasting its intelligence. The race of "everyone else damaging health" versus "pixie dealing 1d4+1 Int damage" ends with a NARROW win for the pixie. As they beat it up, parts fall off, but the resulting small insectoid is always there, just with less and less legs- eventually, down to two, and very small. Further damage simple results in it becoming harder to see. They trap it in a jar.
They camp "overnight" in the alien area, and free the one other lifeform. He introduces himself as a Remlock, and claims that his extradimensional people are a sort of "arms dealers" to free realities, hoping to protect them and in some cases, manipulate endings that their seers otherwise predict would end badly. The Remlocks and the Serthyanics have had many, many conflicts, and the Remlocks eventually lost, with their foes exposed to a powerful destructive new philosophy, one that assured their violent victory over not merely their foes, but many other realities as well- only small sections of their once powerful race remain, and he had been trapped by a stasis bomb thrown through the door nears its inception. The creature, he explains, is a kind of pet- the Serthyanics "infected" them long ago, modifying them to kill their Remlock allies and masters. He is normally kept in stasis, but obviously that had failed. He offers them their choice of rewards for saving his pet, breaking him out of stasis, and establishing trade contact with Caligo. They decide to retrieve Ash, as choosing from the list of rewards should involve everyone. Hopping out, Ash is surprised to find that they hop in, and hop back out- definitely bedraggled and jubilant. They fill him in, and the entire team goes in to collect their reward.
Magical doodads in hand (they select knowledge of lesser blue magic, and a healing stream totem), and with Yuv Agol again being free to roam in his fractionally dimensioned abode, they set their focus on a more pressing thing: the link with Rim-Thul (who they know as "the Cruel", the jerkamancer that imprisoned Charlotte and was researching other fey-related tricks).
They meet the link to Rim-Thul- a thieves guild contact locally- and Ash communicates with Octessa via sending, who arrives personally with some high ranked Zemnian knights, and a bard. The bard distracts the crowd while the PCs make the hapless and villanous contact their bitch, and Rigby charms the living hell out of him (magically and otherwise). He states that Rim Thul has a magical eye watching, and a bit of divination magic reveals that, indeed, it is in that very place. Octessa disintegrates it, but presumably Rim Thul has seen them all? Once he reveals that Rim-Thul has a base in the north, along the coast, Octessa is done with him and his plans of pimping and slavery. She disintegrates him while the bard distracts everyone, and tells the heroes that Rim-Thul is assuredly gone from his hiding place, or will be by the time anyone arrives to dispense justice.
Not dissuaded by this, they arrange transport with a wizard from Zem tower. Alenka, having seen this twice now, shrewdly realizes that the teleport-mages are universally burned out slacking drunks- wizards of above average power who somehow are complacent and largely eagerly accept the time "off the clock" to visit a new place and enjoy various low-brow pleasures. The town (Winterport [I think]) that they teleport to is nondescript, conservative, and has little to do with outsiders, but is still part of the Empire, and shows the guests the cautious respect granted to outsiders- including some directions to where they think Rim Thul may be hidden. With the invisible pixie fluttering his tiny wings up the cold mountains (and this is summer!), they make their way toward the hidden mountain hideout. Along their way they meet some Frost Giants, apparently very recent cave dwellers. The four are divided into two clerics and two who follow the more traditional, axe-swinging way of life. The frost giants quickly realize that they are outforced, and were wrong to attack, and had a bunch of other information about Rim-Thul. At one point, a giant even holds Alenka's life in his hand, threatening to kill her unless the combat stop. Thinking quickly, Rigby, realizing that neither he nor anyfuckingone else speaks a goddamned syllable of Giant, just fucking shoots him with a save-or-get-fucked arrow, and, blissfully, he gets fucked. With the giants murdered, they make their way up...
...cautiously...
To near the peak of the mountain. Up at the top, they find a rather large cottage built into the side of the mountain. The door is thrown open, furniture and debris are strewn about. Below axe marks in the wall are severed pieces of white and black hair, and there are some human footprints all around- clearly the signs of a fight. On the inside, where would normally be a nice sitting room, is instead a massive hole in the ground, which the group is totally going to explore!
It is Dissonance 12th. Tempest, a day of supernatural storms and a jarring discontinuity, has come and gone. The second month of summer begins, and the second cycle of flowering plants begins, as all the nations of Caligo have finished their first harvest and are planting again for the next cycle before the winter. But along the northern coast, high away from the world's surface, facing a body of water larger than the Pacific, the heroes plan to fight whatever the hell comes out of that hole...
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