The morning after the party returned to the djinn city, Silvana, acting on behalf of Whitemoon, quested Subator to guard Priestess Henora of Helibane (in payment for the heal Tylerion provided). Looks like Whitemoon expects her to have some problems during the war...
Our heroes next started hashing out plans to deal with the Pazazu followers. The core of the problem appeared to be the gate on their cloud ship -- what was there to stop the bad guys from retreating through it and coming back later when the coast was clear? Turns out Jenx had yet another trick in his nigh-infinite bag: a way to make a gate explosively self-destruct, solving the retreat/access problem and setting off a nice 10-die explosion both on the ship and in the heart of the Pazazu Temple back home. The catch was that it would take a turn to rig the gate to detonate, and then it would go boom in at most three rounds. So the overall plan was to have the party split up; while most of the party provided a distracting frontal assault for twenty to twenty-five rounds, Jenx and Subator would sneak into the heart of the ship, Jenx would arm the gate, Subator would guard Jenx and ring a really loud bell on the round Jenx finished his work, and then everyone would split in time to escape the fireworks. No problem, right?
Meanwhile, the party's excursion had attracted some attention, and a magic carpet came by to bring people to the Caliph. To cut down the size of their expected donation, the party sent a few representatives instead of the entire crew, and Silvana, Cambra, Ganeth, and Stealth took a nice ride up the tower to see the Caliph. Aswan and Aziz were also present at the audience. Silvana forked over a few small translucent blue gems she'd picked up before coming to the Cloudlands, and the Caliph indicated that the magic carpet itself was his return gift. The Caliph then went into a longish and somewhat unfocused speech in which he nearly sent the party out to get some ingredients for a liqeur he was fond of, but he was set back on track by the vizier whispering in his ear. Turns out the Pazazu people had stolen a magical fountain from the djinn, and the party's job was to go get it back. Thus ended the audience.
The vizier took the party aside for some more detailed briefing. His first piece of advice was not to get too excited about the carpet because its enchantment was only good for a day. When Ganeth asked for a description of the missing artifact, the vizier assured him that if the strike was sufficiently successful, the fountain would be recovered.
- Ganeth:
- "So we don't actually need to worry about searching for it before we detonate the island."
- Vizier:
- "You're going to blow up the entire island?"
- Cambra:
- "Just because we're mortals doesn't mean we're wimps."
The vizier provided a few extra carpets to ferry the rest of the party, and Aziz was able to requistion some first-level djinn support (two priests and an archer). The vizier also mentioned that there are people who feel that the Caliph may have gotten a bit foolish in his old age (to the extent that immortals get old) and told Aziz that his position could improve substantially if this mission was a success.
- Frankel:
- "I thought they were chaotic good."
- Cambra:
- "Well, just because they're good doesn't mean they're good."
And so the party headed out to meet the Pazazu ship. They located the cloud without incident, though it didn't take nearly as long as expected -- turns out the ship was heading straight toward the city.
- Cambra:
- "Maybe they're coming back to return the fountain they accidentally acquired."
[silence]
"It was just a thought."
Precasting began, and Jenx and Subator broke off on their carpet to sneak in the bottom part of the ship.
During the combat, the party discovered that there were illusions covering most of the entrances to the ship (expect for the obvious front door) and that all of the entrances they investigated were electrically trapped. So they mostly stayed outside and fought whatever came out to meet them (thus keeping the villains' focus outside the ship instead of on their gate). Here follow encountered enemies and their fates:
- A fighter in bright golden armor was flying invisibly next to the ship (which was flying at 9" throughout the combat) and was promptly dropped from the combat by a dispel magic.
- A blue-robed mage was standing guard outside the front door. He got a rainbow pattern off but was held, Melfed, and eventually just killed.
- A demon in a blue loincloth was illusioned to look like a big sandworm -- it was pounded, then it went gaseous, then it was lightning bolted into oblivion.
- Four spearmen tried to block the corridor beyond the main door but were taunted out into the rainbow pattern. Some surrendered, the rest retreated.
- An air elemental was summarily executed.
- A gnome with a combination arqebus-axe and a helmet sporting an axe-wielding tentacle was pounded unto death. This was the only non-stoneskinned humanoid the party faced.
- A sneaky shadowy figure looked like a thief trying to get a backstab on Beeel but was actually an illusion to lure him in front of the electricity-firing tapestry facing the main door.
- An invisible stalker was quickly dispatched.
- A rust monster appeared at the front door but was tagged as an illusion when it didn't stop to eat the gnome's gear.
- An imp was hiding along a passage concealed by an illusory wall; when it knew it had been spotted, it retreated.
- A beholder turned out to be a demi-shadow monster; it died faster that way.
- A kensai wielding a two-handed-something-nastier-than-a-katana was lured out by a fake spellcasting routine, swarmed, and held, but was able to retreat before the party could kill him.
- A chasme was summoned and pounded heavily; it also scared Frankel, Stealth, a djinn priest, and the djinn archer into fleeing for parts unknown.
- Two air elementals were also summoned; one was frightened off by the chasme, the other fought and died.
- A cambion(?) wielding four scimitars was swarmed and hacked into pieces.
After about 25 minutes, there was still no bell, so the party decided the plan had gone awry and things would start getting really nasty soon -- thus, it was time to split. As they left, a gnome briefly appeared, tried to imprison Aziz with an item, and ate a non-fatal lightning bolt for his trouble. Some time later Stealth was located and the lost djinn priest returned with Frankel and a random aaracokra, who hung out for a while and then flew off home.
The archer also made his way back to the party; on his way, he found Subator drifting along on meditation power. Turns out Subator wasn't quite able to keep up with Jenx's various desperation moves and got separated; some time later the bottom of the ship blew off and he fell out.
The party followed the ship's last known course and found what looked like the back half of the island, with a smooth spherical indentation at one end where the central ship used to be attached; there was also a tunnel running along the central axis of the fragment. It was carrying the chasme, who was too wounded to fly and was pelted by Stealth from afar until it died, and a bunch of corpses who were quickly (but not too quickly) relieved of their items.
- Rahul:
- "Looting is not a half move."
The other island fragment (also with spherical indentation and tunnel) had a live gnome wearing explosive armor; Ganeth went over invisibly and intimidated the gnome into dropping all his stuff, and Aziz took him into custody. The gnome's name was Lobo, and he was an inventor from C-Ra; he was most recently involved with a human cult who claimed to be the human progenitors of the githyanki. This cult is based in the eastern mountains near the Pazazu temple, and there is a lot of "cross-fertilization" between the two groups. It seemed the overall plan was to meet up with a Demonfire priest near the djinn city; the ship was carrying a large cargo of oil that would be used to gate in piles of efreet to attack the city. While the attack was in progress, Lobo was supposed to use his tunneling machine to break into the Caliph's treasury and steal some special white gems that the Pazazu priests could use to summon air creatures. He also verified that the ship had a gate at its center, though it wasn't a simple one: It was a spherical white object, and where you came out depended on both where along the surface you went in and your angle of incidence.
Lobo witnessed most of the events of interest; he was apparently in the tunnel with his device when the fun happened. First there was a big explosion from the area where the oil was stored; this is probably what blew Subator out of the ship. Less than three minutes later, there was an implosion, as the ship shrank into a little ball and vanished. So it looks like the Pazazu gate was indeed hosed.
According to Lobo, there were 25 or 30 people on the ship (which means it may have had extradimensional spaces to hold them all, or there was something analogous to the drow capsellas inside the ship's central gate). The motley crew included:
- The High Priest of Pazazu
- Thiacyn, an insane summoner and illusionist (presumably responsible for the rust monster and the beholder)
- Zeeel, the kensai with the big sword
- Byunkil, the precipituously dropped "Golden Boy"; originally from the West, either a fighter or a dual-class fighter-mage
- Xybos, a blue-robed mage; possibly the one who got toasted out front
- Nugikeel the spearman and his fifteen lackeys
- Bulbus, an insane person who had an affinity with puddings
- Six lizard creatures (smaller than lizardmen)
- A secretive and anti-social adventuring party, featuring the four-armed cambion and eight others
- Lots of cultists who were coming and going through the gate
- A yuan-ti
The fate of the people caught in the implosion is unknown. There has also been no sign of Jenx or his magic carpet. The party returned to the city, where the vizier congratulated Aziz on the fine job he did recovering the fountain and advised to party to ponder what sort of boon they might be interested in.
- Erich:
- "So, does the vizier have a daughter for Aziz?"
- Rahul:
- "The slimy vizier is not married, but he knows the queen well."