After memorization and healing the following morning, King Tizhalux invited the party up to his house (which looks like a large cabin that was built by several architects, with an older ornate part and some more functional-looking additions) for a chat (and to teach him air bolt); Thorongil rooted (gaining healing but not sustenance from rooting on a cloud) and Subator waited outside, but everyone else went on in. The party also met KT's dog, which was well-behaved, curious, and ten feet tall at the shoulders.
The King was wondering if the party was in a big hurry to return to their Prime, since cool adventurers don't come by that often, and some friends have a job that shouldn't take more than a year or two: A group of pacifistic philosophers are building a "PlanarShip" to migrate to the party's Prime, but a group of evil dwarves is after some precious metals that are needed for the ship's construction, and KT is looking for someone to protect the philosophers until the ship is finished. (The dwarves' burrows are too small to allow KT to handle things in person.) Their world does have parks and forests, and though they don't have elves, the forests have "the same face" and possibly their own version of PD...but even if the elves could survive out there for a few years, there's Rakni to be dealt with.
The Zzifls (all of them) are also looking for adventurers to go on an especially desperate mission to take on a sentient planet that's rapidly becoming Neutral Evil. The background here is that "the place was placed under quarantine thousands of years ago by the Mediators, in an attempt to damp out the volatile conditions. It was hypothesized that the alignment fluctations in the region were being amplified by the strong presence of magic." So magic was extinguished there. (We have no idea who the Mediators are, and KT probably told us more than he was supposed to under extraplanar rules already.) But some time later, the priests there tried to restore magic by imbuing the planet with sentience. The planet turned out to be rather ambitious and has been taking over the priests and a lot of the populace (who used to be Zzifl recruits); in fact, it seems to be trying to change the "environment" to Neutral Evil (in the same way that the outer planes are aligned), which would mean that only evil magic would function there and the energy the Zzifls had invested would go straight to the lower planes. (Incidentally, sentient locales aren't all that uncommon, but they usually serve other local or extraplanar creatures rather than their own ambitions.) Since the planet's intelligence is localized in various nodes within the planet, the Zzifl plan is to send certain of those nodes into the Void. Not surprisingly, they're having a hard time getting takers for this plan, and with the coming war and Rakni waiting in the wings, the party's not going for it either. (And since the Zzifls have apparently been searching far and wide for people to do this mission, it's a little surprising that they never tried contacting Ganeth themselves; one possibility here is that Zzukiss doesn't want to risk losing his Red One along with the planet.)
- Ganeth:
- "When you said you sensed great Chaos in me, what did you see?"
This seemed like an innocent enough question when it was asked. KT replied that Ganeth was carrying more energy than a mortal should or could (presumably the chaos source, since the energy was strongly chaotic and Ganeth didn't seem to have access to it). And that this state of affairs is dangerous, in that it makes him very visible to certain "sensitive" extraplanars who see him as a threat and makes many creatures attack him preferentially. And that the energy could be released explosively (perhaps like a Chaotic Holy Word, perhaps in an Astral explosion, perhaps into becoming a vessel for a Chaotic avatar). But he also noted that it might be possible to bleed off some of this energy and use it to give Ganeth some sort of power, at the loss of some of his mortal protection from extraplanar interference. (Apparently this is the sort of deal that generates cambions and other human-extraplanar symbiotes such as Master Ixthreel, except that no evil energy is involved here.) Possible powers include flight, armor, or augmented physical stats, and the loss of mortal protection would be commensurate with the level of the extra powers. (Augmented mental stats are also possible, though this is riskier, since the characteristics of the energy start to seep into the personality of the mortal involved.)
Ganeth decided to go ahead with the procedure, so KT brought in his friend the Pearly One, a grey slaad with scalpel-like claws, to do the deed. Ganeth was anesthetized (numbed but fully conscious and lucid), and the Pearly One opened him up, lodged a blue gem in G's ribcage (which is a vaguely reassuring focus, since the blue ones seem most compatible with Plant Dude-type energies...but I hope it was sterilized), and had him stitched up inside half an hour.
- Pearly One:
- "You are an excellent patient. We should do this more often."
The effect Ganeth settled on was a weak pinning of his strength and constitution that would offset any losses to these stats by one point (and would therefore negate the debilitating effects of the next age step if another solution isn't found by then), except in anti-magic zones. About ten percent of the Chaos energy was bled off in the process...probably one percent to power the stat fixes and the overhead to KT and the Pearly One. The power is innocuous enough that it's likely to have at most a small effect on Ganeth's mortal protections.
After the operation, the Pearly One left to visit some friends in Sunrise -- Silverton was its favorite city before all the trouble with Rakni started.
- Pearly One:
- "Speaking of spiders and stuff, are you guys in cahoots with the Drunkards? Eight-legged drunkards? Dancing Wooly Spiders? Guess not."
- Ganeth:
- "Which faction of spiders are they?"
- Pearly One:
- "The crazy one."
After the slaad had gone, Ganeth found a small pearl in his gear.
- King Tizhalux: [flashing a mischievous grin]
- "I have no idea why my friend would give this to you, but it is chaotic. Hopefully it does not fit in to any long-term plans we should know about but don't."
When the Pearly One arrived, he had a blue slaad in tow. Beeel had taken his lawful self outside to join Subator, just in case the Pearly One showed the usual slaad anti-lawful tendencies, but the blue slaad apparently has keen senses, since on arrival he decided he wanted to play in the garden and headed out, with most of the party in pursuit. (Meanwhile, Ganeth had his operation.)
- Subator: [to Beeel]
- "Look. Here comes a slaad."
- Blue slaad: [with a murderous grin on its face]
- "Chicken?"
- Beeel:
- "We don't have any quarrel with you."
- Slaad:
- "Sorry to bother you."
- Frankel:
- "I have a quarrel with you."
- Slaad:
- "Yeah?"
- Frankel:
- "You don't attack my friends. Yup."
- Slaad:
- "Are you telling me what to do? NOBODY tells me what to do. Even I don't tell me what to do."
- Beeel:
- "We're going to have to send you home if you attack party members."
- Slaad:
- "I want to adventure. You're not being very monsterly."
Since the local humanoid monsters seemed rather intelligent, the slaad suggested gambling for boons instead; Silvana suggested the slaad leave the island and look for adventure elsewhere in the Cloudlands. Frankel suggested a pun contest, which sounded like fun to the slaad (who didn't know what a pun was), but when Frankel couldn't think of one, the slaad got frustrated and entered melee with the party. It lost.
The King had a third adventure possibility in mind, and this one looked a bit more feasible, since it was on the party's Prime and is relevant to the war. Rumors have been going around that the Easterners are going to be throwing stone giants at the Western army during the war. It turns out that the Earth Worm Temple has been taking stone giant children and turning them into strong and nastily cunning living golems, controlling the constructs and trapping the spirits. The other stone giants (who are tied to elemental earth, which the Earth Worm has some control over) are serving the Easterners rather than lose their spirits to them. However, mountain giants can't be threatened in this way, so KT's plan is to use them to free the stone giants. The mountain giants are, alas, "misguided" (which I think translates as mildly evil but with potential for good), so getting them in line might take some doing.
The titan's gate opens into the central marble statue in the King's shrine on Mount Tizhalux (in the eastern mountains), and the aforementioned misguided mountain giants worship there. The locale is also home to an old stone giant priest called Mother Basalt, who has been trying to rally the mountain giants. She believes that the Earth Worm's control over the stone giants works though a staff that is carried by one of the Earth Worm priests (a stay-at-home type, according to Mother Basalt), and the control would be broken if the staff were too. (And yes, there's a retributive strike involved.)
This almost looked possible...the idea would be to come flying out of KT's shrine, avoid killing the probably hostile mountain giants, make contact with Mother Basalt, help her rally the mountain giants, and help MB and the mountain giants get the stone giants to start defecting if they're called upon to fight in the war, which would bring out the control staff to re-establish control over the stone giants, and then the party could nuke the staff. Or something like that.
After a full DOH, the LG contingent returned to the flumphs for their infusion. The next day, as the party prepared to leave the Cloudlands, the conversation with King Tizhalux once again turned to giants. Thorongil asked the King how he felt about fire giants and frost giants, and the King had to admit that they were more than misguided, since they tend to worship evil powers, and fire giants (especially Grolantos, who had an evil weapon to intensify his nastiness) have a tendency to kill other giants.
- Thorongil:
- "We had a slight hand in Grolantos's demise."
- King Tizhalux: [suspiciously]
- "Slight hand?"
- Thorongil:
- "Actually, two slight hands."
- King Tizhalux:
- "I have been watching you. It appears that I was slightly harsh in my initial evaluation. You are not as bloodthirsty as your kills indicate -- active, but not bloodthirsty."
- Thorongil:
- "We definitely started it with the frost giants, but taking out the Cryonax avatar justified it after the fact. :)"
- King Tizhalux:
- "Cryonax? You were involved with that too?"
Amazing what those mortals get up to sometimes...
Silvana summoned the cloudship, and the King lugged it down to his cellar, where he keeps his gate. (The cellar also featured a human-sized diorama showing a battle between some adventurers and a devil; there were also other "miniatures" scattered around.) That gate itself was a glowing arch that KT activated with a spell. Before the party headed through, Ganeth asked KT to look at the blood whetstone and the feather from Froot Loop; Tizhalux thought the feather felt remarkably benign, while the whetsone looked decidedly dangerous (probably useful for fighting lawful creatures that can't normally be harmed by G's weapons, but perhaps with side effects such as berserking or vampirism).
- Ganeth:
- "Golly...whoever's sponsoring this whole Red One deal just seems so friendly..."
The mountain giants were a little surprised to see the cloudship come barreling out of the shrine. The Whitemoon translator relayed Silvana's message about the party having been sent by King Tizhalux and needing to speak with Mother Basalt, and while there was some dissent among the assembled, the overall consensus was that their god would never send anyone so small. No stone giants were in evidence, so the party planned to circle around and wait for her to turn up...but then the giants started lobbing boulders (killing the current translator incarnation and damaging other people), and the party realized they'd never survive the wait, so away they went.
Since the peak of Mount Tizhalux is inside the wind barrier, the cloudship was flying low, and the party had a fly-by with three wyverns (two adults and one juvenile); they killed one of the adults en passant and flew away. They circled back over the mountain giant village, and this time they did see a male stone giant (with boulder in hand), but still no Mother Basalt. Recognizing the need to get as close to home as possible before the cloudship ran out, the party left again, this time for good.
After about an hour of flight, the party flew past an encampment of adventurers; they didn't stop, and the other party didn't have time to respond. As the party left the mountains (heading southwest), the weather turned cloudy, and the party flew by a regiment of skeletons walking westward. Three hours later, they flew over a construction site with three stone giants and a lot of humans (or near-humans) hard at work. A few minutes later, they crossed the Banzeel-Marakeel highway. And a little while after that, the cloudship set down on some farmland, about half an hour's walk from the nearest village.
Subator headed out on his own to try to make his way to Priestess Henazeen, and the party was faced with the task of getting out of the East alive.
- DM:
- "You are all standing in a soggy field. Any cool ideas?"