On their way to the djinn city, the party got a bit more info from Jenx regarding his brother. Basically, Subator is Jenx's human foster brother, has always been Lawful Evil, doesn't feel a tremendous degree of brotherly love for our overly desperate kenku, seems very protective of his birds, and got some spell-parrying sai when he started working for Kharnzeel, but really is insane to top it all off. Just so we know.
- Ganeth:
- "So what does Subator want, really?"
- Jenx:
- "I think he wants to start a family, but he hasn't found the right woman."
The party eventually arrived at the djinn city (which seems to support far more architecture than a cloud its size really should) and were flown to a room on the side of the Caliph's tower. With nice furniture. And a long drop from the only doorway to the cloud outside. And a patronizing guard named Aswan. But fear not, the Caliph was sure to ask to see our heroes someday...
As the party cooled its heels, Aswan offered to have various merchant and craftsdjinn from the bazaar come up to peddle their wares. Ganeth decided he wanted to talk to a djinn adventurer instead; Aswan produced his cousin Aziz, and (at least from Aswan's perspective) the trouble soon began. While Aswan was a smoothly slimy immortal bard with political aspirations at court who would never refer to the Mocking One by name, Aziz was an excitable and impulsive fighter who said "Pazazu" whenever he damn well pleased and whose courtly aspirations extended about as far as the Caliph's daughter. And Aziz and his adventuring buddies had encountered just the clouds the party wanted to find: A long thin cloud (a thousand feet long, fifty feet thick, and a hundred feet wide, with a hundred-foot radius sphere embedded in the middle) carrying a dozen or so Pazazu-worshipping humans (and some pet flying black puddings) and their own little gate, and a smaller cloud swarming with lots of big black birds and one crazy human.
Aziz's big plan was to somehow get the Pazazu people to attack the djinn city and then fight them off with the party and win the affection of the Caliph's daughter. But getting there was likely to be a problem (even with the cloud ship lasting for double its normal duration), so they decided to attract a smaller amount of attention by going after Subator instead. (Which didn't sit too well with Aswan, since he'd probably be in trouble if the Caliph happened to pick the expedition day for an audience, but he didn't actually stop the party from summoning the cloud ship outside their door and taking off on it.)
After some futzing about, the party managed to locate Subator's island. The plan was to send Jenx in with Aziz to tell Subator that the party had come to kill his birds but would be willing to negotiate with him in person; meanwhile, the party would start actually attacking evil birds to make it plausible. In practice, when Jenx got in, the birds started circling in a big cloud, which became a small cloud, which eventually vanished entirely -- the birds had taken off through a gate (except for a few invisible birds who were guarding it) and Subator had ducked through a door that led to an extradimensional space (though he was still talking to Jenx from inside). Jenx threw some item into the gate and clogged it, and the party landed to deal with Subator (hopefully through Silvana casting awake on him to make him momentarily lucid, while the party beat on him to keep him from parrying the spell, and then following it up with a heal to permanently restore his sanity).
- Jenx:
- "He's had some bad companionship over the years."
- Cambra:
- "And we're going to fix all that?"
- Jenx:
- "No, we're going to screw him around some more -- but at least he'll get some hit points."
Aziz was able to rip the door out of the wall of Subator's cave (it's a cave made from cloud, after all) and bring it to the cloud surface, where Silvana and Jenx started cracking it open while Frankel used his hawk mask to ramble at Subator in bird speech (at one point discussing his plans for the door in more detail than many would find necessary). Once they had it open, Frankel charged in but blew his dex check, got thrown by the gravity change (since the door was still lying flat on the cloud), and only managed to get his hindquarters inside.
- Cambra:
- "Well, he did say he was going to take a dump."
But eventually the good guys got themselves sorted out, Subator summoned in some spellcasting wraith-wannabes and a bodak, and general mayhem was had by all -- especially Subator, whose max damage strikes with a d3 weapon inflicted 10 points of damage and who was doing a good job of weapon trapping, weapon breaking, and just plain parrying despite lying prone inside a net Aziz had created and tossed over him. (Ganeth also demonstrated that darkness 15' stops a bodak's gaze attack, though the bodak turned out to be after Subator, whose summoning had been interrupted by Aziz and his net. The bodak-summoning item, an abacus, survived the incident.) Subator did indeed become calmly coherent after the awake, became calmer still when Jenx lit some incense (which smelled sickly-sweet in a way not unlike some people's remains), and became calmly pissed at Kharnzeel after the heal from Tylerion cured his insanity and a remove curse took care of the amulet (which naturally tried to choke him on its way off).
Subator didn't remember much about the birds or Kharnzeel's plans, unfortunately, but he did remember two of Kharnzeel's passwords: "inkabol" for the pentagram in the extradimensional space (which registered actively evil intentions on Cambra's detect evil) and "yibjig" for something called the crystal cocoon. This cocoon is apparently a rejuvenation and healing device that Kharnzeel and Subator have used over the years -- Subator is actually over 300 years old (and given Jenx's problems with time, there's no telling how old he is). Subator doesn't know if the device needs blood or sacrifices to run, but for now we'll assume that the answer to Ganeth's (and the Red Mage's) aging problem isn't as simple as taking out Kharnzeel, walking into the cocoon, and saying "yibjig."
Treasure was also liberated from beyond the door, including some wax tablets that resemble untitled scrolls (so no telling what they do until you read them, though they may be the mage equivalent of sphere mastery spells) of evocation, illusion, and perhaps alteration, three magical pearly white eggs (one evil, one good, one presumably neutral) that radiate summoning magic, a large and heavy brass bottle, and a thin silver crown with black coral and a small red gem (radiates evoc). According to Subator, the last three items were unidentified and possibly dangerous objects received from a LN high priest who worshipped cubes. The party also read over Subator's journal, called "The Circle", which philosophized about the unity of the universe (and its ultimate enemy, the Void), discussed his fighting style (emphasizing defense by destroying opponents' weapons -- ignoring the existence of magical weapons, which can't be broken in this way -- or trapping monsters' body parts and so gaining the advantage), gave a bit of biographical information (mainly regarding his anti-magic weapons and starting work as Kharnzeel's bodyguard), and finally shifted into recipes for birdseed.
The door was tied shut and thrown off the cloud. Ganeth examined the gate and learned that it either went to the Abyss or someplace very much like it -- but the gate extended only through the ether, with no astral manifestation at all. (And didn't Jenx say the Abyss was someplace the Cloudlands didn't connect to?) Silvana dispelled the gate, Jenx recovered his gate-clogging item, and poor Kharnzeel is going to have to get by without any new karfu.
And so, with one of their major objectives completed, the party headed back to the djinn city.
- Frankel: [to Subator]
- "Maybe you'll become good."
- Cambra: [aside]
- "Maybe he'll become chaotic."
- Subator:
- "Becoming chaotic is unthinkable. Becoming good is just stupid."
Turns out the cloudship attracts hunters; as the party headed back along its trail to the djinn city, four hunters were coming the other way. The party decided to put all their attacks into parries for the round they passed under the monsters and then use their superior speed to get away (except for G, who was flying under his own power to make room for Subator on the cloud and simply decided to fly beneath the cloud to avoid being attacked). The party divided into clusters around Subator and Beeel (who get the most parries per round and so had the best chance to save others from being grabbed, inspiring more overall faith than a paladin's aura of protection) and waited for the onslaught.
- Cambra:
- "I can't believe the Champion of Good is throwing over a paladin for evil."
Unfortunately, everyone forgot that there's an excellent chance that sixteen attack rolls will contain at least one natural 20, and four people ended up getting grabbed anyway. The djinn airlift worked overtime, bombs were indiscriminately lobbed by the maniac kenku, and other stuff happened while I fell asleep at the table (at his flight speed and MC, G needed six rounds to circle back to the combat anyway), but in the end the party prevailed and returned to the city to once again wait for their audience with the Caliph.