Further adventures in space
Where were we? Well conveniently Rik covered everything up to the encounter with the dragon, so I'll pick up there.
The dragon was very scary. I tried to hide behind Rik. Rik tried to hide behind me. In fact, the only one who wasn't scared was Rod. But once he'd explained what we were doing there, the dragon didn't seem to be actively hostile. And after some negotiations we eventually agreed to go and get some 'golden orb' for it, in exchange for which he would give us a new boat. Also we wouldn't get eaten. This seemed like a fair deal to me.
We all stood clear while Rik opened the door to let the big lizardy thing into the room. The dragon grabbed it and ate it. It did occur to us that Vixxter's body was still in the lizard, but it seemed like a bad idea to argue with the dragon. Then we brought in the husbands, wives and crew, into what we hoped was safety while we went orb hunting. We also had to break the news of Vixxter's untimely demise to his wives.
I don't care if Rik Wikibile is the suavest damn half-orc who ever lived, I still say he's even worse than me at breaking bad news. I asked my husbands to look after them while we were away.
With Vixxter gone and Yoyo keen to stay behind with the crew, we really needed another person to bring along. One of the crew claimed to be a bard, and turned out to be rather good at it. His name is Dazed. We didn't ask.
We followed the dragon's directions back into the room lit by a strange greenish light, which came from crystals on the walls. In the floor was a tunnel leading straight downwards into darkness. Even Rod, with his night vision, couldn't see the bottom.
Rik lifted one of the glowing crystals off the wall, and immediately collapsed, seemingly poisoned. We rushed him back to the dragon room for a quick heal from the dragon, who fortunately obliged. Meanwhile Rod (who is now poison-proof as well - being undead clearly has its advantages) picked up the crystals and dropped them down the tunnel, where they smashed.
Rik got his 150' rope out of his bag of holding, and Rod was lowered down the tunnel. Rik followed him down with an ever burning torch as a magic detector. No magic. There was, however, a strange green misty creature which followed Rik as he made an extremely hasty exit from the tunnel. We legged it back into the dragon room, where the dragon zapped it for us.
Then we all went down the tunnel in search of Rod. At the bottom was a hemispherical room with four passages leading out and a strange looking floor like a huge iris that looked like it opened up clockwise. There were also some smashed bits of what looked like quartz crystal, which I was careful not to tread on.
Some tracking from me located Rod in the east passage (after all, he's my favoured enemy), and Rik, Sarflex, Stripy and Dazed went to investigate. I stayed in the middle with Merick - an antimagic field seemed like a bad place to be a wizard in, and I thought it best he have someone with him who can fight. Clearly it was a good choice to stay behind, as I heard odd noises, but they soon returned with Rod who had hidden from the mist creature in a room at the end.
The door had a symbol on it meaning air, and investigation of the other passages proved that as I expected, west was water, north was earth and south was fire. And each passage had a room at the end with a big iron wheel in it. Rod opened the doors for us, his poison immunity coming in handy yet again.
Sarflex went south, Dazed went east, Rik went north and Rod went west. Merick and I stayed in the middle to let them know what happened. Each of them turned their wheel clockwise, and the floor opened up in the middle. Out rose a stone pillar with an obsidian pedestal on the top. And resting on that was a golden orb. A suspiciously egg-shaped orb.
I'm not sure why Merick's wizarding course included a section on the identification of dragon eggs and sexing of dragons, or why this isn't covered in basic rangering, but Merick was able to tell me that this was a gold dragon's egg (the fact that it was gold, and the egg of a really big reptile did give me a clue here) and we shouted to the others that it had worked. And also that magic was switched on again.
Stripy and Sarflex in the shape of a cheetah shot out of the south tunnel with a ball of flame behind them. Rod strolled out of the west tunnel, unconcerned by a coating of frost (cold-proof as well!). Rik struggled out of the north due to his feet sinking into the floor. Dazed found himself severely inconvenienced by some acid gas, but fortunately some kind of wind spell from Sarflex cleared the air and he emerged from the east.
I suggested that before anyone touched the egg we should think about how we were going to get out, just in case the floor fell away from under us or anything. So me, Rod and Dazed all climbed back up the rope, and Rik, Merick and Sarflex all tied themselves to it. Then they picked up the egg.
The floor did not collapse. However, magic switched off again and sand started pouring out of the sides of the tunnel. Rod grabbed the rope and pulled the others out again.
Back at the top we looked into the dragon room, and saw that the families and crew now appeared to be trapped in an invisible box. I was quite sure none of them were secretly mime artists, but the dragon explained that this was insurance. In case we didn't want to hand over the egg.
We handed over the egg.
The dragon gave Merick a scroll, and revealed another door. Through we went, up a staircase, and there in a large pointy room we found a big grey pyramid, bristling with weapons. It had a door. We got in.
It turned out to be a proper ship for space travel, with a place to put the helm. While we still had the death helm, I noted that I had issues with using it if we had the option of a helm that didn't involve death, so Merick used the scroll to create a great helm. There were also crew quarters, a weapons deck for all the ballistae and catapults, and an observation deck that Sarflex and I agreed would have to be turned into a garden. Rik got into the helm, the room outside the pyramid opened up, and off we went.
We made speedy progress towards the ice world. It was a strange place - round, like the moon. Why doesn't everything slide off? Anyway, we landed by the only interesting features on the entire world, an old ruined city. We left the families and crew on board (with instructions to practice with the weapons) and went investigating.
Certain parts of the city turned out not to be all that ruined after all, in particular a huge dome with several doors. Looking in we saw the law-thingies from the moon, all lighting candles and preparing for something.
Should we attack or leave and go and investigate their squid-ships (also spotted in the city)? Despite the fact that I think everyone agreed to leave, we somehow ended up going in anyway.
We approached quietly under the cover of a globe of invisibility, and waited while Dazed cast an assortment of spells on us. Then Merick opened up by creating a wall of fire to divide the group of mages in half, while Rik tried to turn the leader into a rabbit, and we all attacked the ones on our side.
I really need a better bow. Merick says that soon he'll be able to create flaming arrows for me, which is lucky as the ones I've got have almost run out, but I'm still feeling a bit inadequate compared to Rod.
Anyway, despite my ineffective shooting, the white creatures were eventually...not so much killed as turned into small piles of snow. This worried me, as did the leader's persistent failure to turn into a rabbit.
There then followed an extremely nasty fight, in which the leader did some horrible colourful thing that soaked me and Merick in acid, and Merick very nearly died. Eventually we engaged our back-up plan - run the hell away - but found that an invisible airborne mage was following us. Only by rolling out of the way several times was I able to avoid being killed myself. If it wasn't for Merick's brilliant plan of putting the wall of fire across the group of animated snowmen, I'm sure several of us would have died. That all of us got out alive is amazing.
I want to go home now. A very nasty mage is now very annoyed with us, since we didn't manage to kill him before he teleported away or something. Nothing good ever happens in space. Even our trip to the moon ended in disaster. There have been far too many near death experiences, and not just for me. Dazed has been helpful, Rik's not bad if you can stop him doing stuff until someone has thought it through, and I'm getting quite fond of Merick. That I don't want anything nasty happening to Rod, Sarflex and Stripy should go without saying.
Discussion with people who know this kind of stuff suggests that the snow people were simulacrums, which the leader used to replace the real law-thingies. The moon elves say that their lawgivers were chosen from their greatest magicians. I'm going to try to explain to my husbands what happened. An evil wizard (possibly a drow, given that he had black skin and we never saw his hair) came to the moon and murdered all the lawgivers, replacing them with his duplicates made of snow. They then tricked the moon elves into building the big crystal things, which were what destroyed their world.
I hope they can forgive me for running away from him.
The dragon was very scary. I tried to hide behind Rik. Rik tried to hide behind me. In fact, the only one who wasn't scared was Rod. But once he'd explained what we were doing there, the dragon didn't seem to be actively hostile. And after some negotiations we eventually agreed to go and get some 'golden orb' for it, in exchange for which he would give us a new boat. Also we wouldn't get eaten. This seemed like a fair deal to me.
We all stood clear while Rik opened the door to let the big lizardy thing into the room. The dragon grabbed it and ate it. It did occur to us that Vixxter's body was still in the lizard, but it seemed like a bad idea to argue with the dragon. Then we brought in the husbands, wives and crew, into what we hoped was safety while we went orb hunting. We also had to break the news of Vixxter's untimely demise to his wives.
I don't care if Rik Wikibile is the suavest damn half-orc who ever lived, I still say he's even worse than me at breaking bad news. I asked my husbands to look after them while we were away.
With Vixxter gone and Yoyo keen to stay behind with the crew, we really needed another person to bring along. One of the crew claimed to be a bard, and turned out to be rather good at it. His name is Dazed. We didn't ask.
We followed the dragon's directions back into the room lit by a strange greenish light, which came from crystals on the walls. In the floor was a tunnel leading straight downwards into darkness. Even Rod, with his night vision, couldn't see the bottom.
Rik lifted one of the glowing crystals off the wall, and immediately collapsed, seemingly poisoned. We rushed him back to the dragon room for a quick heal from the dragon, who fortunately obliged. Meanwhile Rod (who is now poison-proof as well - being undead clearly has its advantages) picked up the crystals and dropped them down the tunnel, where they smashed.
Rik got his 150' rope out of his bag of holding, and Rod was lowered down the tunnel. Rik followed him down with an ever burning torch as a magic detector. No magic. There was, however, a strange green misty creature which followed Rik as he made an extremely hasty exit from the tunnel. We legged it back into the dragon room, where the dragon zapped it for us.
Then we all went down the tunnel in search of Rod. At the bottom was a hemispherical room with four passages leading out and a strange looking floor like a huge iris that looked like it opened up clockwise. There were also some smashed bits of what looked like quartz crystal, which I was careful not to tread on.
Some tracking from me located Rod in the east passage (after all, he's my favoured enemy), and Rik, Sarflex, Stripy and Dazed went to investigate. I stayed in the middle with Merick - an antimagic field seemed like a bad place to be a wizard in, and I thought it best he have someone with him who can fight. Clearly it was a good choice to stay behind, as I heard odd noises, but they soon returned with Rod who had hidden from the mist creature in a room at the end.
The door had a symbol on it meaning air, and investigation of the other passages proved that as I expected, west was water, north was earth and south was fire. And each passage had a room at the end with a big iron wheel in it. Rod opened the doors for us, his poison immunity coming in handy yet again.
Sarflex went south, Dazed went east, Rik went north and Rod went west. Merick and I stayed in the middle to let them know what happened. Each of them turned their wheel clockwise, and the floor opened up in the middle. Out rose a stone pillar with an obsidian pedestal on the top. And resting on that was a golden orb. A suspiciously egg-shaped orb.
I'm not sure why Merick's wizarding course included a section on the identification of dragon eggs and sexing of dragons, or why this isn't covered in basic rangering, but Merick was able to tell me that this was a gold dragon's egg (the fact that it was gold, and the egg of a really big reptile did give me a clue here) and we shouted to the others that it had worked. And also that magic was switched on again.
Stripy and Sarflex in the shape of a cheetah shot out of the south tunnel with a ball of flame behind them. Rod strolled out of the west tunnel, unconcerned by a coating of frost (cold-proof as well!). Rik struggled out of the north due to his feet sinking into the floor. Dazed found himself severely inconvenienced by some acid gas, but fortunately some kind of wind spell from Sarflex cleared the air and he emerged from the east.
I suggested that before anyone touched the egg we should think about how we were going to get out, just in case the floor fell away from under us or anything. So me, Rod and Dazed all climbed back up the rope, and Rik, Merick and Sarflex all tied themselves to it. Then they picked up the egg.
The floor did not collapse. However, magic switched off again and sand started pouring out of the sides of the tunnel. Rod grabbed the rope and pulled the others out again.
Back at the top we looked into the dragon room, and saw that the families and crew now appeared to be trapped in an invisible box. I was quite sure none of them were secretly mime artists, but the dragon explained that this was insurance. In case we didn't want to hand over the egg.
We handed over the egg.
The dragon gave Merick a scroll, and revealed another door. Through we went, up a staircase, and there in a large pointy room we found a big grey pyramid, bristling with weapons. It had a door. We got in.
It turned out to be a proper ship for space travel, with a place to put the helm. While we still had the death helm, I noted that I had issues with using it if we had the option of a helm that didn't involve death, so Merick used the scroll to create a great helm. There were also crew quarters, a weapons deck for all the ballistae and catapults, and an observation deck that Sarflex and I agreed would have to be turned into a garden. Rik got into the helm, the room outside the pyramid opened up, and off we went.
We made speedy progress towards the ice world. It was a strange place - round, like the moon. Why doesn't everything slide off? Anyway, we landed by the only interesting features on the entire world, an old ruined city. We left the families and crew on board (with instructions to practice with the weapons) and went investigating.
Certain parts of the city turned out not to be all that ruined after all, in particular a huge dome with several doors. Looking in we saw the law-thingies from the moon, all lighting candles and preparing for something.
Should we attack or leave and go and investigate their squid-ships (also spotted in the city)? Despite the fact that I think everyone agreed to leave, we somehow ended up going in anyway.
We approached quietly under the cover of a globe of invisibility, and waited while Dazed cast an assortment of spells on us. Then Merick opened up by creating a wall of fire to divide the group of mages in half, while Rik tried to turn the leader into a rabbit, and we all attacked the ones on our side.
I really need a better bow. Merick says that soon he'll be able to create flaming arrows for me, which is lucky as the ones I've got have almost run out, but I'm still feeling a bit inadequate compared to Rod.
Anyway, despite my ineffective shooting, the white creatures were eventually...not so much killed as turned into small piles of snow. This worried me, as did the leader's persistent failure to turn into a rabbit.
There then followed an extremely nasty fight, in which the leader did some horrible colourful thing that soaked me and Merick in acid, and Merick very nearly died. Eventually we engaged our back-up plan - run the hell away - but found that an invisible airborne mage was following us. Only by rolling out of the way several times was I able to avoid being killed myself. If it wasn't for Merick's brilliant plan of putting the wall of fire across the group of animated snowmen, I'm sure several of us would have died. That all of us got out alive is amazing.
I want to go home now. A very nasty mage is now very annoyed with us, since we didn't manage to kill him before he teleported away or something. Nothing good ever happens in space. Even our trip to the moon ended in disaster. There have been far too many near death experiences, and not just for me. Dazed has been helpful, Rik's not bad if you can stop him doing stuff until someone has thought it through, and I'm getting quite fond of Merick. That I don't want anything nasty happening to Rod, Sarflex and Stripy should go without saying.
Discussion with people who know this kind of stuff suggests that the snow people were simulacrums, which the leader used to replace the real law-thingies. The moon elves say that their lawgivers were chosen from their greatest magicians. I'm going to try to explain to my husbands what happened. An evil wizard (possibly a drow, given that he had black skin and we never saw his hair) came to the moon and murdered all the lawgivers, replacing them with his duplicates made of snow. They then tricked the moon elves into building the big crystal things, which were what destroyed their world.
I hope they can forgive me for running away from him.