Since the party had about a month to kill waiting for their items to be ready, they decided to head back to the flying brazier and check it out. Unfortunately, the cloud had moved on, so the party waited around to see who else would turn up. After an hour, six urds came by, apparently scouting; when the party moved to engage, they scattered. The party splattered one with missile fire, then went at a second; it folded its wings and dropped, which registered as an unusual maneuver and was taken as a sign of efreethood, so most of the party dove after it. (Frankel hung back to engage the other urds, who were considering turning around and pursuing the party.)
The urd headed for a cloud with six large (4' high) invisible cat-like creatures on it and changed to efreet form; when the party didn't wade into the cats after it, it drew a flaming wand and tried to incinerate the party's carpet. (It failed, though it managed to start some continuing fire damage rolling.) On closer inspection, the creature looked more like a demon-efreet crossbreed of some kind, but it was still vulnerable to conventional application of +1 weapons. Moving to Plan B, the pseudo-efreet pulled out a bone chime and rang it, setting off a L12 dispel magic that torched a few of the party's spells. And just as it died, it rang the chime again for Plan C, opening a gate that had neither astral nor ethereal components. (The special effect was more like a portal rotating in through a higher-dimensional space than the traditional blue line.)
The portal (which was transparent to vision and spells) opened onto a chamber with a pentagram, eerie red-glowing candles, burning incense, an altar, and three people in robes; the room itself seemed to be in a castle or temple basement, with dark stone walls and no windows. The party fired some spells in, one of the robed people fled, another (a young woman) got caught by an Evard tentacle, and the third (an older-looking man) dropped a darkness on the area. Frankel rejoined the party, and Stealth put up a bat sense, scouted the chamber, and reported that the old guy had left and the young woman had freed herself. Meanwhile, the party managed to loot the pseudo-efreet and trade some food to the cats for Beeel's nunchaku, which he'd dropped onto the cloud during the melee with the pseudo-efreet. (The cats seemed unable to vocalize but may have been telepathic, like half of the other local life forms. Cambra didn't sense evil in any of them.)
The portal continued to show its deviation from standard gatehood by remaining open round after round. Eventually, 8 imps came flying out; the party killed them. When the party returned to the gate, a small invisible bat was hovering in the darkness (so if it hadn't been invisible, G would never have been able to detect it...such is life). A round later, the darkness went down; in the room, the Evards and humans were gone, the air was smoky, the floor was on fire, and a red-skinned humanoid with horns, a tail, and a trident was watching the party through the portal. And firing off immolating gaze attacks. And radiating serious evil. And giving the general impression that it was time to get the hell out of there.
The party took off over the top of the gate to see how it looked from the back and got one more surprise -- instead of one gate, there were actually three, arranged in a triangular prism; the other two gates appeared to open onto a meadow and a waterfall (causing Cambra to speculate about them being fire, water, and earth-related gates). The top surface was made from an unfamiliar grey material and had carvings or runes that the party was too far away to identify. Thorongil and Ganeth began to suspect that this object had been in the Cloudlands all along, and the chime had just caused it to come out of whatever extradimensional pocket it had been hiding in. The party returned to the djinn city, with the invisible bat presumably following from far behind.
The party had an audience with the Vizier immediately upon their return to the city. The Vizier believed that the pseudo-efreet the party defeated was a Dark Efreet, an efreet who has entered the service of some master and traded its immortality for immediate powers (such as regeneration) and the hope that its energy will re-form into a true lower-planar being. (And they're not mentioned in polite company.)
- Cambra:
- "Is it possible to trade temporary benefits in for immortality?"
- Vizier:
- "Yes -- isn't that the quest that drives many of your kind?"
The Vizier also mentioned that the cats are usually pets of cloud giants, though the party didn't encounter any in the area. He didn't have much insight into wherever the portals opened onto, though he asked if any of them went to a plane of metal (probably because the Cloudlands don't have much of the stuff) and mentioned rumors of a plane with vampiric plantlife. He also thought the portal was created by mortals. And he decided that this matter was best brought to the attention of more active servants of Good, so he told the party they were leaving the city to rendezvous with a local flumph in fifteen minutes. (The air items are to be delivered to the party's Prime via the couatl, and the djinn will be on guard for the bat.)
So the party (plus Subator) found itself on a 30' diameter disk-shaped cloud with a little igloo-like structure in the center. Subator started hearing voices mumbling incoherently in his mind. He also informed the party that the waterfall is an ancient Eastern religion with physical and spiritual components; the physical components involve worshipping different aspects of the waterfall, with different worshippers specializing in different aspects, and little is known about the spiritual side. The religion is currently practiced by monks, but not by priests; the monks are skilled warriors who are trying to recover the religion's lost mystical arts. Going even further back, the waterfall was once part of a structure of religions that revolved around meditating on various forms of water such as rivers and lakes. The Returning Wave (which symbolizes "yielding before an enemy's attack, only to strike when the enemy has ceased its advance") is the most famous aspect of this ancient water religion; the rationale behind the Waterfall is that "the water is not hurt by the fall, but the waterfall wears away at the rock and destroys anything in its path."
- Subator:
- "Many today seek ancient relics that were created in those times."
- Cambra:
- "Much better than the Ancient Relics they make nowadays."
Nothing about meadows fit in here, though, and Cambra wondered if the meadow might be an illusion, created because that's what the party (chock full of elves and centaurs) might want to see.
The igloo housed a flumph named Aurelian, who preferred to communicate telepathically but could speak to the "zombies" (mind-shielded people) by vibrating some crystalline portion of its anatomy. The party started telling Aurelian about the gate, and the flumph mentally uplinked to some friends; it then decided that the situation was way out of its league and spun up the disk, causing Subator, Ganeth, Stealth, and Frankel to create new navigational hazards over the side.
As the disk sped toward a hopefully safe haven, Aurelian got more information from its compatriots. Life was more interesting than the party had thought: There was an elemental prince of evil aboard the gate, and that invisible bat had summoned a horde of roughly 6d8 invisible stalkers and 2d6 aerial servants to send after the party. Or more specifically, after the chime, which the flumphs believe is an amulet that holds all the energy the prince was storing up.
The party ran into a group of hunters, including a hunter queen capable of firing lightning balls and estimated twelfth-level electric arcs; Aurelian was able to neutralize some of the queen's electrical attacks, and the party was beaten to a fairly bloody pulp but drove off the queen and killed most of her minions. A storm cloud dragon (not good, often with chaotic tendencies) was also in the area, but Aurelian was able to evade it, and the disk finally arrived at its destination...which turned out to be a Law Matrix and therefore did Stealth, Pepper, and Ganeth no good whatsoever.
After a bit of deliberation, the party decided to travel on to another cloud the flumphs knew of that's inhabited by pegasi and a titan named Tizhalux, who happens to have a gate back to the Prime. And in hopes of losing their pursuers, they left the chime and the wand with the flumphs, who figured they could use them to do some nasty stuff to the devil in question. (And the flumphs wanted to be clear that they were doing this out of duty, not kindness.)
In return for the party's assistance in protecting Aurelian and bringing them the toys, the flumphs also answered one question for each of the characters (except for Subator, by dint of his evilness, and Pepper, who decided to pass). The flumphs also offered to give the LG party members a temporary infusion (an extra effective level, basically), but the process takes several hours and the pursuit was closing in, so Beeel and Cambra missed out (at least for now).
After another little ride (and the deployment of a few more of those navigational hazards), Aurelian dropped the party off on a 1-mile-diamater cloud island, complete with a central mountain with a giant tower on top. After some imperfect communication between Pepper and some local pegasi, the party was led to a sheltered valley where they could set up a defensible position for the coming "night". And the pursuit did indeed catch up: four invisble stalkers, something that was probably an aerial servant (supervising from above), and an invisible demonic flying goat (possibly created from an item) that rams into people for 20+ points, knockback, and trampling damage on a failed dex check (until Frankel jumped in front of it, anyway...he was too big to run over, stopping the goat in its tracks; it later became stunned, heavily pummeled, and dead).
As the combat wound down, a horn blasted, stunning the non-Good stuff in the area (on a save, at -4 for evildoers); a bit later, Tizhalux poked his head into the valley. (He was 30' tall, carrying a big maul and a horn, and not looking too happy about having Evil creatures attack people on his island; he took out his frustration on the devil goat corpse, spewing ichor everywhere.) He recognized Silvana, wasn't too happy about Subator (but accepted that he was under a quest from Whitemoon), wanted to learn air bolt from Ganeth, thought Pepper was cute, and stepped on the goat for good measure, just in case squashing it with the maul wasn't enough. (This last action also seemed to put him in a better mood.)
- King Tizhalux: [to Ganeth]
- "I sense strong Chaos in you. Are you looking for work?"
(Tizhalux has holdings on several planes and is generally looking for intelligent and independent warrior types who can step thorough gates and fix problems. Ganeth replied that his plate's pretty full, but he's generally open to associations with Good extraplanars such as the King.)
Meanwhile, Thorongil was trying to feign sleep to hide his giant-killing-ranger aura. It didn't work.
- King Tizhalux: [to Thorongil]
- "And you, young elf, what have you to say for yourself?"
- Thorongil:
- [no reply]
- King Tizhalux:
- "Hmmm? CAN'T HEAR YOU..."
- Thorongil:
- "Got a guard shift coming up, gotta sleep. Zzzzz."
- King Tizhalux: [to Silvana]
- "IS THIS HOW YOU ADDRESS A KING?"
- Silvana:
- "I'm sorry. He's shy."
- King Tizhalux:
- "A SHY GIANTKILLER?"
- Silvana:
- [starts talking about how Thorongil only kills evil giants, befriended Gorgag, etc]
- King Tizhalux: [patting Thorongil on the head]
- "It's okay. I know why he's quiet. He's feeling repentant. Let's not spoil the good mood."
And since mortals need to rest (which amuses Tizhalux), the King went back home; the party will be talking to him again in the morning.
Pretty uneventful day, no?