Note: Gita has compiled what we've learned about Dustworld so far.
The party found themselves in a small cave, with a blinding glare coming from outside. Even inside the cave, the light took some getting used to. Apart from the party, the cave appeared to be occupied by several long-dead orc skeletons and some scorpion husks.
Though everyone seemed to come through intact, there were a few minor but noteworthy changes. Ganeth's dragon scale armor, though intact, looked duller and softer than before, while Pepper felt far weaker than on the Prime without the power feed from Plant Dude. And everyone who brought magic items found them replaced with fine silver threads that seemed to come out from their bodies; the threads had a tiny metallic bead at each tip, where a reflection of the item could be seen. (So Pepper wound up attached to a longsword, a ring of reducing nonproficiency penalties, and a tic shield, while Beeel's horse found itself with a death's door armband.) Attuned items were no longer functioning, and no spell effects made the transition. Beeel's tattoo of casting hold person vanished, and the hit points he'd invested in it returned. Ganeth's GODbelt and jellybean, being creatures themselves, were unaffected; oddly, the feather also came through intact, though it wasn't clinging to G as strongly as before.
Silvana examined the orange sand on the floor of the cave and noted that the grains were cubes; after some searching, she also found an octahedral one, and noted that the cave itself was shaped like an octahedron. Yves noted something about softball-sized rolling around in the cave, and Quaz performed a minor psionic scan of the area (doing himself a point of damage in the process). He detected many disembodied spirits in the cave, all looking to possess bodies (perhaps answering the what-happens-after-death question), a possessed creature in the back of cave (perhaps what Yves saw), six human or humanoid creatures outside in the desert (moving together with a clear leader), and an alien intelligence pervading the area and watching him. Yves went to the mouth of the cave to check out the conditions; he guessed that moving around in the desert could cause about d3 points of damage per day.
The party headed outside to seek high ground and scan for signs of civilization. Once out, they noticed that the entire sky radiated bright, hot light (hosing anyone hoping to hide in shadows, since there basically aren't any). The cave turned out to be a twenty-foot tall octahedral structure on a flat plain; elsewhere on the plain were other orange polyhedra, some stacked on top of each other, eventually blocking line of sight in any direction. The immediate area seemed to be octahedron territory; the party could see a stack of them reaching up about sixty feet. Somewhere off in the distance, there appeared to be a very tall stack of cubes.
No creatures were immediately visible, so the party headed over to the octahedron stack, and the thieves headed up to scan for critters and signs of civilization. They discovered that the top of the stack was covered with tar, and small scorpions, spiders, and insects were trapped there baking to death. From near the top, they estimated that the cube tower was about an hour's ride away; they also saw a sandstorm coming from the direction opposite the cube stack and a group of kobolds sneaking up on the party. After some discussion resulting from the lack of an established chain of command beyond Beeel, Yves and Silvana drew a little map of the situation and dropped it to the others, who headed off to outflank the kobolds. Combat ensued, with kobolds slinging from the tops of single octahedra, thieves firing shell-tipped and untipped arrows from atop their pile, and both melee and missile fire occurring on the ground. At the end, there were nine dead kobolds, including a would-be horse thief with a lasso and a leveled thief leader, and some minor insanity.
- Stealth:
- "I hate kobolds. They're the real evil."
- Ganeth:
- "On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Silvana, and drow and undead tying for 10, where do they rate?"
- Stealth:
- "We never knew it, but they were probably behind the drow."
- Ganeth:
- "Kobolds manipulate the undead into manipulating the spiders into manipulating the drow into taking out the grey elves?"
- Stealth:
- "Convoluted, but definitely possible."
Ganeth did not in fact share Stealth's sudden obsession with kobolds, but he did develop an excessive fear of getting wounded, thinking that on the Dustplane, the experience would be extraordinarily painful.
Yves scooped some tar from the stack for eventual use in flaming arrows, and Silvana rescued the scorpions (who were weekly) from the rooftop food trap. She discovered that her ability to speak with animals had a 10% failure chance, though she managed to engage it.
- Silvana:
- "Are there giant spiders around here?"
- Scorpion:
- "First there are the greater eights (us) and the lesser eights. Then there are the sixers and a few fours. This was the doing of the fours! But we will forgive you for saving us. What's a spider?"
- Silvana:
- "I think you would call it a lesser eight."
- Scorpion:
- "Oh yes, they are the fallen ones. They were punished and their stinger was taken away. They are doomed to spin their sorrows while the Greater Ones hunt free."
- Silvana:
- "Do you know where to find sand grains of different shapes?"
- Scorpion:
- "We don't eat sand."
- Silvana:
- "Who eats sand?"
- Scorpion:
- "A twenty eats sand."
- Silvana:
- "Do the fours eat sand?"
- Scorpion:
- "Only the stupid ones."
- Silvana:
- "It doesn't work for fours?"
- Scorpion:
- "You should eat other fours instead."
- Silvana:
- "What do you eat?"
- Scorpion:
- "Sixes."
It seems that creatures here are categorized by the number of limbs they have (all numbers of faces -- or vertices -- of Platonic solids) and are best off eating stuff corresponding to the dual of their number. (Cubes and octahedrons are duals, so eight-legged scorpions eat six-legged creatures; tetrahedra are their own duals, so fours should eat other fours; by this theory, there may be something intrinsically 12ish about the sand, possibly tying in with the liason's comments about dodecahedron technology.) The scorpions didn't know anything about crystals, portals, or gates and had never seen the silver threads before.
Meanwhile, Beeel searched the kobold leader's body and found some interesting stuff, including a stone dagger and a blowgun with poisoned needles. There was no indication of how the kobolds dealt with the heat; their burrow may have been very close by. And since there were nine of them, the group Quaz sensed could still be at large.
The party mounted up and headed toward the cube tower (and away from the sandstorm), taking the kobold corpses with them; Ganeth and Silvana started their jellybeans (edible oozes that feed on carrion) on two of the fallen (which I suppose could be an indirect way of eating other fours).
- Beeel:
- "Nobody is to feed Frankel to the jellybeans while he is above 0 hp. That's an order."
After an hour's ride, shadowed by some rather large scorpions for the second half, the party approached their immediate destination. The cube district consisted of a central tower built from eight huge cubes, starting at 80 feet across on the base and decreasing by 10 feet per cube on the way up (for a total height of 360 feet), and sixteen (four times four) 20-foot cubes in a circle surrounding the tower (each with one face directly toward the tower). The smaller cubes had a black recessed square, 10 feet across, at the center of each face; the thieves checked them for traps and found none. (The tower cubes had similar squares on their faces; the bottom cube had a 40-foot by 40-foot window starting 20 feet above the ground.)
Yves brought up the question of command of scouting teams and other splits. Beeel decided that he would designate a subleader if possible, but if not, lawfuls (that'd be Yves and Quaz) would be in charge.
As Beeel approached the small cube to knock on the window, night fell abruptly, but Quaz was able to get some torches lit before the scorpions were able to sneak in and attack. (The entire plane is warm on infravision, making it difficult to spot people against a background and easy to hide in thermal shadows...also easy to spot undead, if there were any.) Beeel knocked and was asked (in Western Common) for a password; he explained that the party had just arrived on the plane and there were scorpions preparing to attack. This was apparently satisfactory, since the central section, which turned out to be hinged at the bottom, opened to make a ramp up into the cube. Beeel made the Consortium hand sign, and the old woman inside, Karzen-Ben, Keeper of the Cube, replied, "May the Four be with you."
Karzen-Ben (who wore robes and carried a pair of thin sticks) was surprised that Beeel's team included a centaur but figured Frankel was still four in spirit. The party (equines and all) entered the cube, and K-B lifted the ramp by touching a wall panel and concentrating. After that came a trip down a spiral staircase through a 10-foot by 10-foot pit in the floor into a large vaulted blue-lit room full of sleeping people on pallets and cots. Beeel offered to stand guard, and the rest of the party went to sleep; this proved non-trivial for the Chaotics, who felt danger whenever they closed their eyes, but a soothing lullaby from Silvana seemed to help.
Beeel found himself on guard with Nothkra, a half-orc who'd lived all her life on the Dustplane. (On closer examination, many of the people in the chamber seemed to have orcs somewhere in their ancestry.) According to Nothkra, people who die on the plane are reborn and become more Lawful in each incarnation. ("Death is purification.") She also said that the plane heals itself every night, and it heals people too, but people staying awake at night mess this up, so they get punished instead. When Beeel was about to wake Quaz for the other guard shift, Nothkra told him not to bother...it was too late to get restful sleep, so all he'd do is hose Quaz's rest and get him punished too. Thus, Beeel pulled an all-nighter and Quaz slept blissfully through the night.
As the light abruptly reappeared outside, a pulse of energy passed over the area, and the guards got to make a death save or take serious (sometimes fatal) damage. Sleeping Chaotics got to make a death save or take a point of damage, while sleeping Lawfuls got healed a point if they made their save. When Stealth woke, he was back to normal, and Ganeth's fear of injury had also passed.Stealth:
- "I guess I overreacted a little. But they are evil."
In the morning, the party talked to Karzen-Ben and tried to learn a bit more about the area. Karzen-Ben has lived on the Dustplane all her life; her habitat has about sixty people, and since there are similar habitats under the other peripheral cubes, overall about a thousand people live in the area around the tower. The "doors" on the sides of the cubes are operated by touching the control panels and making Wisdom checks to open them. Tunnels around the ring of habitats have one-way valves that are similarly operated; since neighboring habitats tend not to get along, part of the duties of the guard shift is using their minds to keep the valves from being opened by whoever's on the other side. (Raids through these tunnels are not uncommon; the people of Karzen-Ben's cube are considering going next door to capture a mentalist rumored to be there.)
Karzen-Ben had heard the party was coming about 120 days ago (corresponding to 3-12 days back on the Prime); she confirmed that many people from the Prime go after the crystals, but K-B doesn't know much about them. Every 240 days, every habitat sends people out to try to penetrate the tower through an opening at the top (the only known entrance, since nobody has even seen the side panels open -- and the top only opens at night); legend has it that if the bravest warriors of each habitat don't turn out for the suicide mission, all the habitats will be destroyed. The legend also mentions a crystal at the bottom of the tower, and someone merging with it is supposed to gain immortality. (Silvana suspects these legends were started by the Consortium to keep people going after the crystals.) Nobody knows what's inside, since spiders have a habit of coming out and killing people on the sides and tops of the lower tower cubes.
K-B confirmed Nothkra's story about the plane healing itself a bit every night, but noted that serious damage can take up to 240 days to regenerate; this may mean that some of the Lesser Crystals are taken out on a regular basis. (This information may not be precise, since "120 days" and multiples thereof may be the round temporal figures of choice -- 120 happens to be the lowest common multiple of 4, 6, 8, 12, and 20.)
Based on other stories, there may be a way to pluck the magic item threads and use the items. The sand can also be put to use, though this is banned in the habitats since it tends to cause insanity. The octahedrons are the most common variety of non-cubic sand, and some people are able to use them to start fires (fitting with the octahedron/energy release theme of the old Spider Monk dice).
Out in the desert, there are rumors about oases, sinkholes, tar pits, creatures that turn people into sand, and cactus creatures that may be the local equivalent of elves.
Since the plane is sealed and no souls can go in or out, life forces get recycled pretty quickly. When an Elder gets old, she takes a "Partner" and has a child, through which her soul "Returns" -- though nobody asked, for this to work it seems likely that women generally don't survive childbirth. (There's also a tendency for souls to become more Lawful as they cycle around.) The party met with a recently-returned Elder, Wazeri-Ben, who to all intents and purposes was a very old woman in an infant's body.
According to Wazeri-Ben, the next sacrifice was due in about 30 days, which would leave some time for preparations. Since the assaults on the tower always happen at night, anything the habitat knows about them has been gathered through Mind-Seers (which is why they're so anxious to steal the latest one from the neighbors...they'd also like the party to do it before taking on the tower, but the party wasn't terribly interested). A "complete success" entails climbing the tower, getting down the inside, overcoming the tests in the chambers beneath the towers, and mentally activating the World Crystal at the bottom, thus escaping the world and gaining immortality (or so the story goes).
Wazeri-Ben believes that the dust shapes are associated with elements: d4 with Earth, d6 with Air, d8 with Fire, d12 with Water, and d20 with Soul. (However, the liason had warned Ganeth that elemental interpretations were both quite common and quite incorrect.)
W-B was able to provide a bit more information on the magic items. To access them, one simply plucks the thread; however, the number (and overall power) of items someone can carry is limited by their Charisma. (On average, people can handle about four items.) Released magic items are "cleansed" from the plane every nightfall.
The habitats are known to be near the center of the plane; little is known about the walls, nor do the locals know enough about the desert to make a map. However, people called Manuks (which is an archaic name for monks, proably related to the "humanist" Manoosh movement) wander the desert and are thought to know more about the crystals. One Manuk came out of the desert about 40 days ago looking for Prime dwellers; since there weren't any at the time, he went away again.
Within the habitats, the locals can help priests regain spells, but they can't do much for mages. They also have psionicists who can do physical and mental healing, scans for insanity, etc.; as with most psionic disciplines, the practitioner takes damage in the process.