A Sundered World: Episode 103

Cast

• Lothelle (moon elf bladesinger)
• Dahn (goliath serpent shaman)
• Iron Jack Derro (human warlord)

Heading towards the mountains, the characters are hit by a sound-storm. They continue, undeterred, and discover a white ziggurat at the base of the mountains. Some bereft angels are shuffling about the foundation, but they easily evade them. At the top of the ziggurat they find one passage underground, ominously marked with skeletons.

Inside they find a door with a sound-lock, which Iron Jack manages to open after studying the walls for similar symbol patterns. The room beyond is a ransacked library; they rifle through the papers and find a moldering skeleton with an enchanted pair of glasses. Searching the books, they discover a string of floating, shifting words that they cannot understand. Lothelle dons the glasses and discovers that they translate any language, including the floating words, which happily answers her questions.

After grilling it for information on primordials, weapons, angels, etc they continue searching the ziggurat, quickly realizing that it is much larger on the inside than the outside. Further inside they find an archive with stone tablets and a staff that stops time, preserving certain areas of the ziggurat from decay. They find more information in the archive, and nab some tablets to read later. Across the hall is a scriptorium, which has high quality inks and paper. With books and tablets in tow, they decide to rest for the night before heading back to Gwynneon.

During the night a golden, beetle-like golem arrives, killing all the angels. Lothelle and Danh warn Jack that the copper one they encountered before could channel devastating lightning, right before the gold one unleashes an intense beam of heat, easily cutting through the walls. They get the staff and use it on the golem, causing it to rapidly age until it turns to dust. Before they can rest a colossal stone golem rises from the floor, apparently a defense mechanism. They barely manage to escape as the golem destroys the ziggurat, burying it in the sands.

They return to the ship without further incident and head to Hammerfast to load up on supplies. They show the mimir the stone tablets and staff, learning about some place called the Armory of Autocthon, the use of angelstones, and that the staff was forged by a god and while depleted could gradually be recharged. Iron Jack installs a ballista and buys enough ritual components to make several major ship repairs "just in case". With that out of the way they head to the Feywild.

Gwynneon performs a ritual, using one of the books from Shom, a weapon and shield, and Iron Jack's blood to bind the location of the Armory of Autocthon to his mind; he becomes unable to unerringly locate it within the churning mass of the Elemental Chaos, just one the edge of the Abyss. Dahn offers up a service to Gwynneon in exchange for information about the World Serpent, and she gives him a stone idol.

As they depart, Dahn manages to undergo a kind of vision quest, where he defeats the World Serpent fragment in the idol, gaining its power. Within the Elemental Chaos, they manage to avoid numerous disasters and fend of elemental monsters before arriving at the Armory. They end up having to clamber inside the door to trigger the mechanisms and safety precautions to open it. The session ended with them at the Armory's threshold.

Behind the Scenes


Sound-storms are the verbal components of spells gone wrong, or mispronounced Words of Creation. They just race across Shom, knocking shit around.


Sound-locks are metal rods in doors that open when the rods are struck in a specific order. These pertain to illumian runes, and form a word. The idea was that the players would find a journal, book, or use a Comprehend Language ritual to figure it out. However Josh decided to scope the walls and look for patterns using History (for cryptography) and Thievery to increase his odds.

The script was a kind of NPC that could help give them some information when stuck, or at least give them a foundation to work with. Unfortunately it took them awhile to realize that the magic glasses radiating divination magic could translate languages. :-P

I was really shocked when I mentioned a staff that Kiara did not detect magic on it. They just entered the archive, raided it for useful information, and then left. Hell, they jacked all the ink from the other room! I am glad that they decided to camp so I could throw a random encounter at them, though even then they did not think of going for the staff. What got them to do it was when they asked the script what they should do, to which it replied to use the staff. While not a plot coupon, it was just one of the really rad magic items I promised (+6 staff, though it got reduced to a +1 after discharging all its temporal magic).

Also, it lead to a really rad skill challenge...

The stone guardian was fucking awesome. It kept trying to nab the staff while they characters, pinning Iron Jack, knocking them around, and generally tearing the place apart. As they got into the halls the place started to sink, causing the floors to turn into walls. The best part was when they were stopped by a bereft angel; Kamon had Dahn chuck snakes at her, causing her to fall into the guardian's hand, which crushed her. Their only regret was that they did not get her angelstone.

The low point, for me, was the Armory door. I really was not prepared for them to get that far at all, and was also pretty damned tired. The mechanics to opening it felt rushed--I had actually forgotten to have Gwynneon give them an item that would hePublish Postlp it make sense--and I just think I did not give it the epic feel it deserved. Even so it was a learning experience for me; take notes, maybe plan more. :-P