Session Fifteen: Returning

From the notes of Igneous

Scene I: Returning the Dragon Queen's Flesh to the Wheel's Ecosystem

With the Dragon Queen dead and visible, she seemed smaller than when active and fighting. Only the size of a small house. About 500 metric tonnes. A "full size" refrigerator can hold between 0.2 and 0.9 tonnes of meat, if you remove the shelves and stuff it perfectly. Purchasing and transporting several hundred refrigerators would not be impossible, but it would certainly be unpleasant. Such a system would also require roughly a hundred kilowatts -- more than standard wiring. And it might not even have run in the Throne, which suffered from a planer effect that hampered electronics.

Instead, we chose to move the corpse to the cold. The cold in question was a high-altitude glacier in the Wicked Mountains. The transport involved the Gate spell, so first the flesh needed to be carved into hexagonal prisms that could be fed through it. We carefully removed the bones, organs and scales, then set out to carve the muscles. With a power sword, power scalpel, Black Blade of Disaster, and extensive knowledge of both anatomy and geometry, we managed.

Leaving the final carving in the hands of others, Igneous travelled to the Wicked Mountains in search of a stable glacier. The Radical Monks were only vaguely aware of the internal structure of the mountains. But they did know where the best hot pools were. They had invented an extreme sport that combined snowboarding, stripping and high-diving. Naturally, this worked best with hot water. Feeling cautious, Igneous chose not to trust the map, and made a brief side-trip to Titan's Arm for a ground-penetrating sonar. Thus equipped, he flew his hoverbike to a promising region of mountains and began surveying.

Scene 2: Returning Janis to her Homeworld

It seemed unkind to make Janis wait while we completed the butchery. So M'k forced open the bag to her realm with Improvised Magic, and Doktor went through to ensure she could arrive safely. He expected this to be reasonably straightforward: a quick punch to that idiot paladin's face and a quick handoff.

Instead he found himself at the bottom of a deep pit with zombie archers shooting down at him. One of them even managed to deal damage, owing mostly to extreme luck. Still, Doktor leapt out of the pit with his jump pack and slaughtered the zombies trivially. Another zombie dropped on him and attempted grapple, but he ripped it in two out of sheer contempt. Soon he found the necromancer who was responsible for the zombies, who ordered all his forces to converge and kill the intruder. Had they converged at once, they might have achieved something by sheer numbers, though even that is doubtful. As it was, Doktor made quick work of the would-be zombie lord.

Scene 3: Returning the Platonic Razor to Its Original Owner, Except Not

As he completed the geologic survey, Igneous noticed something very strange. A human-sized blob of 1g/cc material was moving through a solid andesite region, leaving no trail. Furthermore, it seemed to be heading straight towards him. The auspex confirmed it as magical, but provided no details. Igneous radiod word to his party, and stepped back giving the thing space to emerge.

It was indeed a humanoid possessed of some strange magic. The conversation went something like this:

Sanguin: Hello, friend. My name's Brian Sanguin and I'm a professional assassin. I'm looking for Doktor Meetslab. Are you a friend of his?

Igneous [relaying everything via radio]: Yes

Doktor [over radio]: Let me handle this guy

Sanguin: Could you tell me where he is?

Igneous: He's busy at the moment, but I'm sure if I ask he'll be happy to come and fight you as soon as he's done

Sanguin: I'm an assassin. I don't want to fight him. I want to kill him. And no warning him about me -- hand over that comm bead.

Igneous handed over the bead, relaying the fact that he'd done so via the other radio concealed in his arm and wired directly to his nervous system. It even used his primary vocoder for proper voice subtlety.

Sanguin: Now I need you out of the way. I'd rather not kill you, because I'm not getting paid to and work without pay is too much like charity for my tastes. So here's some drugs that'll knock you out. Please just take them.

Igneous: I'm not in the mood for drugs. How about I just get back to my geological survey and out of your way?

Sanguin: No way. I'm not leaving you here doing who-knows-what.

Igneous: I'll explain it. The mountains are a pretty standard andescitic structure...

Igneous failed to convince Sanguin that geology was an interesting subject, but he did manage to keep talking until Doktor Meetslab arrived in a great hurry. At that moment, Sanguin stabbed Igneous with a tranq needle and dived into the ice.

Irritated at being drugged, Igneous enhanced his dodging skill and stood ready for when Sanguin re-appeared.

The battle that followed was deeply frustrating. Sanguin popped in and out of reachable space (though he remained trackable via auspex. He was extremely capable of dodging, but so was Igneous. For several rounds, nothing was achieved. M'k arrived, and hit Sanguin with Unluck, a potent but not crippling curse.

In the midst of this, Sanguin revealed that he was the original owner of the platonic razor, which Idris stole from him to ante into the Strongest under Heaven tournament. He was very emotionally attached to the razor, and very distressed at the idea that it might be destroyed. Why was not clear. Eventually Doktor began to consider returning the razor if Sanguin promised to kill Moloch-Zur with it, a rather risky plan (it would have revealed Lost and Found to Sanguin, and risked Moloch-Zur somehow corrupting him). In any case, it was not to be. Igneous was too angry to cease fire, and when Sanguin was distracted handing Doktor a letter of recommendation, Igneous finally struck him with a pushed Drain Energy.

It was a perfect combination: Samael's music boosting Igneous's attack, M'k's Unluck sabotaging Sanguin's save, and Igneous's own pushing creating a devastating amount of magic. Sanguin went from untouched to down in an instant.

He did try to dodge into the ground, but was a bit too slow. He phased and then passed out, and fell straight to the center of the world. The large-scale geology of the Wicked Mountains is unclear, but some form of molten core seems likely. In any case, he did not return.

Igneous's push triggered a psychic phenomenon, but the wraithbone he'd grown in his heart did its job, and those present felt nothing more than a vague unease waft at their minds.

(For a few seconds before this, Samael had been radioing about zombies in Lost & Found, so Igneous and M'k went there to help, leaving Doktor to guard the bag.)

The letter of recommendation was an interesting document. It contained phrases like "He's a good friend, and was very useful to us, but I've ordered all my soldiers to shoot him if he ever returns".

Shortly thereafter, a spelljammer came into line-of-sight and dropped a landing shuttle. Aboard it was an ominous vampire catgirl, also an assassin, who had transported Sanguin here on a promise of entertainment. Words were exchanged between Doktor and the catgirl, and now she has joined our crew. Once the zombie matter was dealt with, Igneous returned with some corrogated sheet metal and built a hut on a stable patch of glacier, and Samuel rallied the halflings to move the meat there. The meat was coated in plastic pallet wrap to prevent frostbite.

Scene 3: Returning Janis's World to Intact Status

The zombies from Janis's world had indeed entered Lost & Found, and were coping moderately well with microgravity. This was not normal zombie behavior. Even so, they had only been moderately threatening to Samuel, and were entirely unprepared for the more violent members of our team.

Igneous and M'k went in to the bag, while Dewey and Samuel stood guard at the L&F end. They were immediately but ineffectively attacked by zombies. Igneous pulled out his auspex and got to work understanding what made these zombies smarter than normal, while M'k chopped some heads or something. The zombie's continuing attempts to bite Igneous slowed the work somewhat, but eventually Doktor showed up and held its mouth closed.

Eventually it became clear that these zombies were raised with a variant of the Raise Dead spell, which enabled the raiser to push bits of his mind onto them. Whenever he gave them a command, he imprinted his understanding of what he wanted, which included things like "How to use a bow" or "That's a portal, you can go through it". This did leave them somewhat vulnerable to commands from other commanding individuals (with commanding mustaches), but not usefully so. It seems plausible that a high level enchanter could have taken control of them, since this sort of mind-imprinting is what they do, but without one at hand, we destroyed the last zombies and moved on. On further searching, we found the paladin in a deep pit. He wasn't at the bottom, but halfway up, standing on a pile of dead zombies and clearly hoping more would show up to attack him. After some deliberation, we let down a rope. Doktor tried to explain the difference between "funny-looking" and "devil", but the paladin still wasn't listening, and insulted Smiley. So Doktor punched him. But somehow this resulted in greater respect and understanding, rather than a fight to the death.

We learned that the world had been devastated by this necromancer. His zombies might be individually weak, and his backup plan nonexistant, but so long as he was controlling the shape of the encounter, his well-organized zombie army could crush enemies piece by piece, and grow much faster than any conventional force. A higher tech world would likely have shut this down by converging quickly and using area-effect weapons, but these low-tech spaces are terribly vulnerable.

After some discussion, we transported the paladin to the nearest intact town, left Janis there as well, allowed them to keep the bag, and even gave them a laser shotgun and a grenade.

Scene 4: Returning the Dragon Queen's Knowledge to the Rightful Possession of the Academic Community

With the Dragon Queen's corpse out of the way, we investigated her hall. Mostly she had a giant hoard of gold and jewels. Amidst it, she had a book, locked shut with a clasp.

We immediately suspected it was her spellbook, and Doktor immediately deduced it was booby-trapped. A quick check with the auspex found tens of thousands of adjurations on it.

Operating on standard containment protocols, we moved the more vulnerable treasure away from the book, then ourselves retreated to Lost and Found. Igneous sent a camera drone to watch, and a Lesser Servant to act on his behalf.

The clasp on the book was unopenable (at least to mundane efforts), but the cover could be cut with an ordinary knife, bypassing the clasp. It seemed that every single character in the book was an exploding rune, a task which required some rather elaborate serifs. Fortunately, exploding runes only explode when read. Photographing them, then passing the photos through a compress/store/load/decompress/display/read cycle merely consists of reading something visually similar but magically null. So the servant flipped pages while the drone photographed.

The book contained several golemmancy spells (enough to reconstruct the art) and a fourth level abjuration that empowers an object to cast a spell. The latter spell was limited enough that it probably can't be used to cast itself, and even if it could, that might not succeed in draining the warp of energy and leaving demons flapping helpless like fish in a desert. Still, something to think about.

In any case, Igneous made a mental note to get the book printed on ordinary paper and contribute it to the Great Library.

Scene 5: Return to the Mirror

Back at the Strongest Under Heaven tournament, Dewey won a communications mirror and a block of mithril by defeating a rather frail roomba from the Vash Barony. We concluded that the Baron Vash spent a giant block of mithril just to get this mirror into the hands of a competitor. Knowing how important Baron Vash might be to our future plans, we... got distracted by a dragon.

But back to the mirror!

As victor, Dewey had the honor of looking in it first, while Doktor hovered behind him.

Both froze.

Igneous used Detect Thoughts to figure out what was going on in Doktor's mind. For a fleeting instant he experience the Total Ego Death that had his crewmates trapped. But just before he gave up on all sense of self, he managed to shut down the connection. It seemed the mirror contained a potent cognitohazard.

After waiting a few minutes in which nothing changed, Igneous covered the mirror with a blanket. Doktor, being heroically strong-willed, snapped out of it. Dewey did not.

We later learned that a "shock to the soul" might reset Dewey. Options for this might involve vampiric feeding (though the standard version is fatal), some form of soul music, true love (which is touching souls), or dark magic (which we do not currently possess).

We also later realized that the mirror was not targetted at "a competitor", but at us, or perhaps at Doktor Meetslab. We weren't even sure if we were the Baron's enemies, though we certainly are now. It is unlikely that he managed to find us, having nothing to start from but a vague query. It is even more unlikely that he arranged for us to get the mirror via ordinary manipulation. If nothing else, the tournament seeding was random. This suggests some powerful probability- or fate-manipulation magic. Possibly powered by a god or greater demon. This magic, along with the soul magic, would be worth acquiring.

But after all that successful manipulation, how did he fail at the end? Did something about the captain keep the fate-manipulation at bay? Or did it not fail? Did he do exactly the damage he intended?

In any case, we became reluctant to tarry -- and hoped to arrive at the Vash Barony before he expected us or had the chance to prepare further.

Scene 6: Return to Sigil

We knew roughly where a Siglian door was, so M'k took his bag of holding and started wandering under archways with eyes closed and tongue out until he reached Sigil. And for some time thereafter, since apparently the traffic noises, proper flooring and less echoy space didn't alert him to the transition. He did notice crashing tongue-first into a trellis of decorative razor-vine, from which he quickly healed.

We sealed the Dragon Queen's fortress with simple steel doors, left the bag there, and all traveled to Sigil.

We first checked on our Whale, which had been parked for nearly half a year. At the dock, we met Frank Earnest, Chosen of Malal who explained that he wanted to help us. We were all well aware that Malal's code strictly forbids helping, and were somewhat confused. Doktor did not wait for clarity, but charged. He did enough damage that Frank would have died had his Chosen powers not kicked in.

As Frank did not fight back, Doktor began to suspect this was some sort of manipulative trap. He let Frank go. Frank gave us his phone number and a warning: The Lady of Pain is coming, and you should probably move your ship.

We evacuated the crew and pokeballed the whale.

Scene 6: Returning Treachery for Treachery

Alta confirmed that Frank had been extremely helpful, so Doktor agreed to meet him nonviolently at a cafe. M'k and Samuel went with him, while Igneous watched from a sniper perch just in case. Despite M'k's interfearence, Samuel managed to draw Frank into a personal conversation. Frank admitted to having done horrible things in the past, insisted that he only wanted to be helpful now, acknowledged that the Commandments of Malal were exactly what we thought, and refused to explain beyond "theology is complicated".

Eventually Igneous commented over the comms, "If Malal is about backstabbing allies, and Malal is his ally, then is he backstabbing Malal by being nice? I still don't see how he isn't smote for that."

Samuel chose not to steer the conversation in this direction, but his active listening elicited the key insight anyway: "Commandments aren't rigid. You can break them so long as you're following the core principle enough. The key principle of Malal is the subversion of friendship."

And our newest crew member got it: "All this helping is permitted because it is in the service of a greater subversion."

This leaves a lot of questions open. How does this "in the service of a greater" effect work? Pelor is notorious of rejecting cruelty for the sake of a greater good, and likewise Cuthbert lawbreaking for a greater justice. Though one expects Dr Catastrophei would be ok with experimentation with faith. Does it vary by god? It can't be a direct decision, or Tiamat would have found an excuse not to be ok with seeking power by overthrowing her.

Is subverting Malol's will enough? Usually followers of Malal hurt their teammates. Or does this kindness actually hurt Malol, in some strange, metaphysical way?

Does he have a plan to eventually kill Malol? What will happen if he succeeds?

Does he ever take a break from his big betrayal to betray somebody local? Followers of Pelor have been known to delay high-stakes quests for random acts of kindness.

Perhaps we will find some of these answers later. More likely not.

Scene 7: Return to Sleepy Pete's

Immediate mysteries solved, we paid a visit to Sleepy Pete's Mixed Meats and Minced Fingers. Doktor Meetslab handed over as much dragon meat as Pete had refrigerator space for (and possibly the fire-flower as well?). Pete celebrated by cooking up a giant bowl of dragon stew for us, which boosted our max hp.

After the stew, we found ourselves in a bit of a time-crunch, so we scattered to our various errands. Doktor travelled to Titan's Arm with our pokeballed ship (newly named "Whalord") where spending money like water enabled him to purchase defensive upgrades very quickly. Samuel found a mithrilsmith on Sigil, who crafted for him a mithril and dragonbone guitar. Igneous ran assorted errands, including checking the locations of the bags, running a fiberoptic cable from Sigil to Titan's Arm, investigating the Ex-Dragon Throne's techbane properties, and some light reading in the Great Library.

And, thus, in less than a week, we were ready to head to the Vash Barony. Route TBD.