The Saturday Game 8/3/19 & 8/24/19 – In the Prison Realm
After running from Acererak’s tomb, the party finds itself near a pool of water filled with swirling liquid suggestive of a portal. We pause to go through the items we took from the tomb and each member gets a random treasure. We identify seven spell scrolls.
After some discussion, we enter the portal and arrive in a featureless plain surrounded by a heavy mist. The Druid shifts to eagle form and flies up to survey the area. In the distance, he sees the ruins of a city. We attempt to follow the eagle without ever seeming to get any closer. The Luchador senses this place is not like other realities. He imagines himself at the city and poof… he disappears! He imagines himself back to us and tells us the secret. We imagine ourselves to the spot of the ruins. At this point, party members realize there is a ghostly cord attached to each of our backs leading mysteriously back. The Paper Merchant imagines himself back to the portal and confirms that the shadowy tendrils lead back to there. We ponder whether our bodies even exist in this seemingly noncorporal place.
Investigating the ruins, we find an archway that again looks like it could be a portal. After a few fruitless tries, the Paper Merchant presses his armor to the stone archway. The interior sparkles familiarly with swirls of magic. We walk through the portal.
And appear in the middle of a city. Our first order of business is to look for an inn and locate the Severed Limb tavern across from an art gallery. We strike a bargain with a peg-legged innkeeper for two evenings stay with room and board. After dividing our money purse, members head into the city shopping for armor, weapons and other essentials.
While wandering, the Druid sees a terrified, naked and uncommunicative human appear out of a portal that blinks open and disappears. Trying to help, the Druid collects the man, but sees soldiers coming shouting something about Blanks. After a chase where the Druid attempts to escape via invisibility and even shape shifting into a rat, the constabulary called The Harmonium hits him dispelling his rat form. He is arrested for interfering with Blanks. The Paper Merchant and Sorcerer follow attempting to explain that we are new to the town, which we now know is the famed city of doors, Sigil. After paying a fine of five hundred gold, the Druid is released and makes his way back to the inn.
As others are out shopping, our Sorcerer and Druid ask people at the inn about these Blanks. They learn that these portals appear periodically, and a person falls out, naked with no recollection of name or any memory. Something like this happening in Sigil usually would not even raise an eyebrow, but this has been occurring every few months for years. The often-combative factions of the city cooperated to organize the Sigil Compassionate Academy for Blanks, shortened to SCAB, to educate and rehabilitate these lost souls since they rarely lasted more than a few days without help.
A few of the group decide to investigate this Academy and set off across the city. They approach an imposing guarded gate. The Sorcerer asks a guard if she can schedule an audience with the Headmaster because we are an experienced adventuring party wondering if they need any help.
After a brief wait, the party is escorted to the dining hall for a meeting. The Paper Merchant sneaks around a bit, but this place looks exactly as described, a school with classrooms, students and teachers. The Headmaster appears in the dining hall. After appropriately vetting our experience, he offers us a task. He states, “One week ago, a building suddenly collapsed in the Lower Ward of the city and a portal appeared.” He gives each of us a rooster’s foot, which is the portal key. He said that they sent a group of students through, but three days passed with no word. So, they sent another group which also has not come back. The party agrees to enter the portal and search for both parties. We agree on a payment for services and return to the inn to prepare and inform other members.
Heading in the direction described by the Headmaster, we easily find the portal and go through into… nothing. We are falling through the air to a rapid moving river that waterfalls into a chasm. The Druid turns into a bat. Some use feather fall. Some of us just end up in the water swimming to shore. Once we all safely arrive, we head to a makeshift encampment around a campfire where two people sit. Approaching them, we find out their names are Turtle and Camel, students from SCAB. Their commander, with another student named Muskrat, left to search in the caverns that pock mark this massive crater of black stone. Days have passed, but they have not returned. Turtle and Camel agree to come with us to search for the others. We also notice a huge unfinished scaffold that they were building back up to the portal.
Following tracks, we enter a lava tube made of slippery obsidian leading sharply downward. Blood appears on the floor as if someone was injured while sliding down. Attaching ropes, the party and students climb down to a small room with two passages leading out. A pool of blood also appears here. Through one passage, we enter a room in the center of which is a large sarcophagus sitting on an obsidian dais. Ominous magical chains wrap around the sarcophagus.
One of the students, identified as Possum by Turtle and Camel, lies dead on the floor, but we secure the body for transport hoping we can have him revived back at SCAB. His body looks covered in pin prick wounds where blood has seeped through. Using clairvoyance, the Wizard sees inside the sarcophagus where a desiccated corpse about nine feet in height appears to have been for centuries. The Paper Merchant looks for traps and finds none.
The Luchador breaks the chains and shoves the lid off. This may not have been a great idea as we notice light begin to glow from a passage and from six sections of obsidian around us. The corpse, a ghastly hybrid of insect and human, has begun to regenerate! On an impulse, the Wizard uses his staff to poke the head and is knocked back across the room by strong protective magic. Around us, eight-foot-tall bugs are emerging from obsidian cocoons apparently triggered by the release of their master.
Magic users begins casting defensive spells, but they are working in unpredictable ways. The Wizard’s tentacle spell is meant to damage, but seems to be healing not only us, but the bugs. The Luchador knocks a bug prone, but a tentacle heals and releases him. We end our spells and begin just physical attacks. One goes down as the Paper Merchant finishes it for thirty points. The corpse in the sarcophagus is becoming more restored but is not yet standing. Six more bugs enter the room. As the hybrid bug man begins chanting, the Luchador tosses a bug to him to shut him up, but the protective magic flings the bug across the room where it slams into a wall and falls dead.
The Wizard attempts to banish the corpse only to banish himself to his home village where various hijinks occur. The gnomes will never lack for oatmeal in that town!
The Warlock takes desperate measures by using her magic rod to teleport bug man and herself to another plane. Instead, they end up in the bottom of the crater surrounded by hundreds of bugs building a ramp to the portal with their bodies. The bug man snatches the rooster foot key from the Warlock, climbs the ramp and opens the portal. The Warlock drops the spell and ends up back in the room without the bug man who has disappeared to Sigil. Nine remaining bugs abandon the fight to flee up the passage. The Luchador climbs out behind them to see thousands of bugs disappearing into the portal. Any remaining bugs scramble in the river falling into the chasm.
Further searching uncovers the corpses of the remaining students that are beyond a cleric’s magic to revive. The Luchador uses his magical jumping boots to secure a rope to the cliff above the portal. The party, along with Camel and Turtle, climb up and reappear in Sigil. In the streets is clear evidence of a huge battle between bugs and the Harmonium with losses on both sides, but events like these, while not common, do tend to happen in Sigil.
We escort Camel and Turtle back to SCAB. An impressed Headmaster rewards us with a 500-gold piece gem each and asks if we would be interested in freelance work for the Academy. Agreeing that although risky, this work is quite profitable we happily take him up on the deal. We take our leave back to the inn for a well-deserved long rest. Any bug on the way back is smashed gleefully by a tired, but richer party.