Post by liam on Mar 26, 2012 1:57:08 GMT -5
Those Meddling Kids
"Everyone remembers that manchild with his stolen Type 40. No one remembers those of us who actually do our jobs. Those who work tirelessly day by day, protecting the integrity of the multiverse. And, honestly, that's the way we like it."
- The Gardener
After another uncomfortable teleportation, the party appeared in a trapezoidal corridor lit with florescent lights. They wandered around for a few minutes, and eventually found themselves in a gallery containing enormous glass cylinders, in which various huge and gargantuan creatures (including a Blue Whale, an Aboleth, and a Glabrezu) floated in suspended animation. Moving on, they found themselves in a slightly less enormous gallery filled with preserved medium sized humanoids and quasihumanoids. Anon rushed off to see if there were any changelings, and more than a kilometer away, found some.
The party attempted to revive one of the frozen creatures (by pressing buttons at random). They succeeded in doing something, when they heard running footsteps approaching on the hard metal floor. It was the a nondescript man who they recognized from the festival in Numenor, who had introduced himself as The Gardener.
He was extremely surprised that someone else had managed to find a way into his TARDIS, and more than a little irritated that they were pressing random buttons on extremely delicate medical equipment. He chastised then (especially Keldion) for how royally they botched the timeline of The Lord of the Rings. Sauron, explicitly informed of his vulnerability, had moved Mount Doom into orbit as soon as he was done with it. Apparently, the Time Lords are still cleaning up that one.
Soon,The patience reached its limit, and he had his TARDIS dump them outside. They found themselves on a plateau, staring down at a besieged city, with a sky full of zeppelins and dogfighting winged creature. Those with high knowledge skills recognized it as the city of Mechanicsburg, ruled by the clan of evil geniuses known as the Heterodynes.
Apparently, a coalition of various feudal lords had formed with the intention of overthrowing the foul Theodosius Heterodyne, and the city had been held in a loud and violent stalemate for several weeks. Mr. Jones and Calvin sought to surmount the walls via magical flight, and Anon by Spider Climb. Keldion just sort of stood outside the machinegun range... until the gates started opening, and a crowd of Jagermonster cavalry sallied forth. Not wanting to get charged by angry Jagers, he dimension-doored into a convenient machinegun nest. While they had guns, he had a magical chain. The soldiers didn't last long.
The party had just emerged into the smoking city when they felt the ship's familiar tug upon them. They appeared once more in the Gardener's TARDIS, this time in an opulently appointed bathroom. Mr. Jones pulled aside the shower curtain, revealing a very irate Time Lord. He called to his ship to eject them again, but Anon managed to grapple him and haul him with them... into a Norwegian fjord. In winter. While soaking wet, and wearing nothing but a towel. He reached for his Screwdriver, but to add insult to injury, Anon had somehow picket the nonexistent pocket in which he was keeping it. He sighed, and let Anon and Keldion back into the TARDIS (which was concealed as a stretch of glacier).
Meanwhile, Calvin and Mr. Jones resisted being dumped out into the snow, and were hanging out in the bathroom eating maccaroni and cheese. It soon became clear that the interior doors in the TARDIS opened into pretty much whatever room the Gardener wants them to- in this case, a clean and well-stocked bar.
Through some very annoying (to their host) banter, the party learned that The Gardener was an anthropologist by trade, specializing in the study of soon-to-be-extinct species and cultures. While the High Council prevented him from actually saving the worlds he studied, he made a point of "saving who you can." Hence, the rather extensive collection of millions of sentient beings, for whom he had yet to find appropriate homes.
This world was due to be demolished (via falling into The Abyss) in nine days time, as the result of a superweapon (intended to break the stalemate between the Heterodynes and the coalition) going horribly, horribly wrong. While he had argued for intervention before the Senate, he was told that there was nothing any Time Lord could do to interfere. Fortunately, he happened to have four stooges standing by, ready and eager to crash a dungeon on his behalf.
While preparing for the raid in the various lounges of the Gardner's TARDIS, Jones and Keldion managed to blow up a room when a deck of Exploding Snap malfunctioned, and set off a Meteor Swarm. Oops.
The TARDIS dumped them into an identical room, except for the fact that there was a teenage girl sitting in the corner, reading a copy of Daring Do and the Legacy of Nightmare Moon. She introduced herself as Laura Noyu, and some Knowledge: History checks revealed that she was the eldest daughter of a certain infamous space pirate. Through a series of hilarious and tragic misadventures, she found herself serving as the companion of a Time Lord. As a fellow spellthief, she got along fairly well with Anon, and as a giddy teenage girl, she got along fairly well with Calvin and Keldion. They were eventually interrupted by The Gardener and Mr. Jones, both of whom insisted that the party get on with it.
The superweapon destined to destroy the planet is located on the mind-numblingly, face-freezingly remote Norwegian-ruled island territory of Svalbard, where you can get away with close to anything because the chance of you doing anything significant enough that'll survive the five hundred kilometres or so of icy sea separating your... let's say, "work"... from contiguous European civilisation are minimal. It's the kind of place where you build bunkers, not just because anything put in the bunker is probable to survive a hundred thousand years plus completely undisturbed and maybe even undiscovered, but because a bunker is the only practical way to stay warm.
The Gardener was polite enough to drop them off, not on the dungeon's front doorstep, but in a broom closet eight floors down, bypassing the majority of the guards and defenses. Calvin decided to be a douchebag, and Dispel Magic upon the Gardener as the doors closed, but thanks to Spell Turning, he just succeeded in losing three of his own buffs. Of course, they proceeded to immediately announce their presence to the guards. By incinerating said guards with explosive fire magic, made all the more explosive by the Crystal of Fire's Chaos that Mr. Jones had been hauling around. Calvin's Orb of Fire was coopted into summoning an uncontrolled Medium Fire Elemental, who they managed to talk into accompanying them for a few minutes.
They cracked open the elevator, but those with Arcane Sight immediately spooked when they noticed an aura of strong illusion covering the whole elevator car. Assuming there was an invisible creature in there, they started throwing area spells into the room. Calvin's Incendiary Slime was redirected by the crystal beneath their own feet (to be set off by the fire elemental who was standing right there), and Mr. Jones, (for some unfathomable reason) decided to teleport into the elevator car.
Or, rather, into the Major Image of an elevator car. Oops.
Fortunately, he caught himself with a levitate before he crunched to death on the bottom of the shaft. The Invisible Stalker eighty feet above him grabbed Anon, hauled her into the shaft, and prepared drop her to her death. Mr. Jones had other plans, though, tossing a Maximized Empowered Fireball up through the floor of the nonexistant elevator car. Of course, thanks to the crystal, it turned into a Maximized Empowered Meteor Swarm. The air elemental was massively overkilled, as was the party's spellthief. Oops.
The 216 fire damage also broke the elevator's cables, sending the reinforcement guards plummeting to their deaths. The group rendezvoused ten rounds later, and made their way down the ruined elevator shaft to the bottom floor. There was a fairly large building, located in the centre of an ostentatiously large underground hangar. The floor of the hangar was croweded with guards and technicians, who quickly fled from the obviously overpowering adventurers who had just exploded into the room. Above their heads, there was a large and complex mechanical Orrey, which looked a lot like the Dimensional Kajigger they were looking for. Anon blew up the crystal Saturn with a borrowed Disintegrate, causing the machine to begin screeching out of tune.
To the opening chords of Night On Bald Mountain, a black, skeletally gaunt winged monster swooped down from the shards of Saturn, its eyes glowing with a terribly orange light. It's a mature Nabassu (FC I p 49). Be very afraid. While Nabassu are quite fearsome with their terrible claws and their numerous energy-draining abilities, it wasn't able to stand up for long against a novaing duskblade and two blaster wizards, and so it fled before doing significant damage.
Calvin was called away by the ship before the conclusion of the battle with the Nabassu, and the others took cover while Anon crippled the Orrey with a Volcanic Storm she had borrowed from The Gardener, enhanced by the power of the Crystal of Fire's Chaos. Not many machines can survive having a miniature volcano erupt at the middle of their complex thingamabobs, and this one rolled a pair of natural ones. Kaboom.
The party was actually somewhat surprised when the bunker did not obligingly collapse when the load-bearing macguffin was destroyed. Mr. Jones was dropped down the elevator shaft (a second time) when an invisible demon dispelled his Levitate. Mr. Jones and Keldion made short work of the Glabrezu responsible, which Anon cackled madly as the machine was destroyed by hurricane force winds, flying rocks, and rivulets of magma.
Keldion didn't feel like fighting his way out, and so made his way to the surface with three Dimension Doors. Mr. Jones and Anon (who had collectively acquired the four pieces of the Wish Token from The Black Typhoon), took this opportunity to summon Azrazubiel and make their wish.
The Glabrezu appeared in a bath robe, holding a mug of hot cocoa (seasoned with brimstone), and greeted them. "So, how can I damn your immortal soul today?" They wanted the 25,000 gp in cash, but he convinced them to take it in spell components, explaining that rubies, diamonds, and whatnot were better than cash. After agreeing that "none of the people from whom the components were taken will miss them or seek revenge", they shook hands with the Glabrezu, who disappeared with a laugh.
They then heard the popping sound of an incomming teleport. Then another. And another. These were rapidly followed by wet squelching sounds, as they noticed that, in the hanger, it was now raining fresh, bloody hearts. Hearts freshly taken from the warm chests human children. Oops.
It took them almost half an hour to scoop up all the hearts. About halfway through the cleanup, a door opened in the hanger wall. The Gardner's TARDIS had returned, and Laura was ready to offer them a ride out. Jones and Anon, laughing and playing with their grisly bounty, offered her a couple of hearts. After all, "We've got plenty to spare!" She stared at the carnage in abject terror for several seconds before wordlessly closing the door.
Loot:
17,000 gp
Mark III Sonic Screwdriver (Counts as a Chime of Opening)
Wand of Cloud of Knives (SPC p ), 21 charges.
Wand of Dimensional Anchor, 7 charges.
Fez of Freedom: This stylish hat allows the wearer to use Swift Freedom of Movement once per day. It can also be used to cast Freedom, once only, after which it is destined to be lost or destroyed under hilarious circumstances.
H.R. Geiger Counter (use Detect Aberration at will.)
Everyone gains 400 xp.
Anon adds Incessant Annoyance to her spells known as a 3rd level spell. This works the same as Crushing Despair, except it causes frustration and annoyance rather than sadness.
Keldion adds Time Hop to his spells known as a 3rd level arcane spell, except that it has a range of touch, and automatically counts as augmented to his full caster level for the purpose of determining the maximum mass of creatures or objects he can transport.
Calvin and Mr. Jones may each add to their spellbook a single wizard/sorcerer spell of up to 6th level from a book that's not on the allowed list, subject to my explicit approval.
In addition, Anon and Jones can split the following:
25,000 gp worth of children's hearts, which will have to be painstakingly fed into the ship's vending machine a few at a time. This will presumably attract quite a bit of attention.
Anon is now Chaotic Evil, and Mr. Jones is now Neutral Evil.
"Everyone remembers that manchild with his stolen Type 40. No one remembers those of us who actually do our jobs. Those who work tirelessly day by day, protecting the integrity of the multiverse. And, honestly, that's the way we like it."
- The Gardener
After another uncomfortable teleportation, the party appeared in a trapezoidal corridor lit with florescent lights. They wandered around for a few minutes, and eventually found themselves in a gallery containing enormous glass cylinders, in which various huge and gargantuan creatures (including a Blue Whale, an Aboleth, and a Glabrezu) floated in suspended animation. Moving on, they found themselves in a slightly less enormous gallery filled with preserved medium sized humanoids and quasihumanoids. Anon rushed off to see if there were any changelings, and more than a kilometer away, found some.
The party attempted to revive one of the frozen creatures (by pressing buttons at random). They succeeded in doing something, when they heard running footsteps approaching on the hard metal floor. It was the a nondescript man who they recognized from the festival in Numenor, who had introduced himself as The Gardener.
He was extremely surprised that someone else had managed to find a way into his TARDIS, and more than a little irritated that they were pressing random buttons on extremely delicate medical equipment. He chastised then (especially Keldion) for how royally they botched the timeline of The Lord of the Rings. Sauron, explicitly informed of his vulnerability, had moved Mount Doom into orbit as soon as he was done with it. Apparently, the Time Lords are still cleaning up that one.
Soon,The patience reached its limit, and he had his TARDIS dump them outside. They found themselves on a plateau, staring down at a besieged city, with a sky full of zeppelins and dogfighting winged creature. Those with high knowledge skills recognized it as the city of Mechanicsburg, ruled by the clan of evil geniuses known as the Heterodynes.
Apparently, a coalition of various feudal lords had formed with the intention of overthrowing the foul Theodosius Heterodyne, and the city had been held in a loud and violent stalemate for several weeks. Mr. Jones and Calvin sought to surmount the walls via magical flight, and Anon by Spider Climb. Keldion just sort of stood outside the machinegun range... until the gates started opening, and a crowd of Jagermonster cavalry sallied forth. Not wanting to get charged by angry Jagers, he dimension-doored into a convenient machinegun nest. While they had guns, he had a magical chain. The soldiers didn't last long.
The party had just emerged into the smoking city when they felt the ship's familiar tug upon them. They appeared once more in the Gardener's TARDIS, this time in an opulently appointed bathroom. Mr. Jones pulled aside the shower curtain, revealing a very irate Time Lord. He called to his ship to eject them again, but Anon managed to grapple him and haul him with them... into a Norwegian fjord. In winter. While soaking wet, and wearing nothing but a towel. He reached for his Screwdriver, but to add insult to injury, Anon had somehow picket the nonexistent pocket in which he was keeping it. He sighed, and let Anon and Keldion back into the TARDIS (which was concealed as a stretch of glacier).
Meanwhile, Calvin and Mr. Jones resisted being dumped out into the snow, and were hanging out in the bathroom eating maccaroni and cheese. It soon became clear that the interior doors in the TARDIS opened into pretty much whatever room the Gardener wants them to- in this case, a clean and well-stocked bar.
Through some very annoying (to their host) banter, the party learned that The Gardener was an anthropologist by trade, specializing in the study of soon-to-be-extinct species and cultures. While the High Council prevented him from actually saving the worlds he studied, he made a point of "saving who you can." Hence, the rather extensive collection of millions of sentient beings, for whom he had yet to find appropriate homes.
This world was due to be demolished (via falling into The Abyss) in nine days time, as the result of a superweapon (intended to break the stalemate between the Heterodynes and the coalition) going horribly, horribly wrong. While he had argued for intervention before the Senate, he was told that there was nothing any Time Lord could do to interfere. Fortunately, he happened to have four stooges standing by, ready and eager to crash a dungeon on his behalf.
While preparing for the raid in the various lounges of the Gardner's TARDIS, Jones and Keldion managed to blow up a room when a deck of Exploding Snap malfunctioned, and set off a Meteor Swarm. Oops.
The TARDIS dumped them into an identical room, except for the fact that there was a teenage girl sitting in the corner, reading a copy of Daring Do and the Legacy of Nightmare Moon. She introduced herself as Laura Noyu, and some Knowledge: History checks revealed that she was the eldest daughter of a certain infamous space pirate. Through a series of hilarious and tragic misadventures, she found herself serving as the companion of a Time Lord. As a fellow spellthief, she got along fairly well with Anon, and as a giddy teenage girl, she got along fairly well with Calvin and Keldion. They were eventually interrupted by The Gardener and Mr. Jones, both of whom insisted that the party get on with it.
The superweapon destined to destroy the planet is located on the mind-numblingly, face-freezingly remote Norwegian-ruled island territory of Svalbard, where you can get away with close to anything because the chance of you doing anything significant enough that'll survive the five hundred kilometres or so of icy sea separating your... let's say, "work"... from contiguous European civilisation are minimal. It's the kind of place where you build bunkers, not just because anything put in the bunker is probable to survive a hundred thousand years plus completely undisturbed and maybe even undiscovered, but because a bunker is the only practical way to stay warm.
The Gardener was polite enough to drop them off, not on the dungeon's front doorstep, but in a broom closet eight floors down, bypassing the majority of the guards and defenses. Calvin decided to be a douchebag, and Dispel Magic upon the Gardener as the doors closed, but thanks to Spell Turning, he just succeeded in losing three of his own buffs. Of course, they proceeded to immediately announce their presence to the guards. By incinerating said guards with explosive fire magic, made all the more explosive by the Crystal of Fire's Chaos that Mr. Jones had been hauling around. Calvin's Orb of Fire was coopted into summoning an uncontrolled Medium Fire Elemental, who they managed to talk into accompanying them for a few minutes.
They cracked open the elevator, but those with Arcane Sight immediately spooked when they noticed an aura of strong illusion covering the whole elevator car. Assuming there was an invisible creature in there, they started throwing area spells into the room. Calvin's Incendiary Slime was redirected by the crystal beneath their own feet (to be set off by the fire elemental who was standing right there), and Mr. Jones, (for some unfathomable reason) decided to teleport into the elevator car.
Or, rather, into the Major Image of an elevator car. Oops.
Fortunately, he caught himself with a levitate before he crunched to death on the bottom of the shaft. The Invisible Stalker eighty feet above him grabbed Anon, hauled her into the shaft, and prepared drop her to her death. Mr. Jones had other plans, though, tossing a Maximized Empowered Fireball up through the floor of the nonexistant elevator car. Of course, thanks to the crystal, it turned into a Maximized Empowered Meteor Swarm. The air elemental was massively overkilled, as was the party's spellthief. Oops.
The 216 fire damage also broke the elevator's cables, sending the reinforcement guards plummeting to their deaths. The group rendezvoused ten rounds later, and made their way down the ruined elevator shaft to the bottom floor. There was a fairly large building, located in the centre of an ostentatiously large underground hangar. The floor of the hangar was croweded with guards and technicians, who quickly fled from the obviously overpowering adventurers who had just exploded into the room. Above their heads, there was a large and complex mechanical Orrey, which looked a lot like the Dimensional Kajigger they were looking for. Anon blew up the crystal Saturn with a borrowed Disintegrate, causing the machine to begin screeching out of tune.
To the opening chords of Night On Bald Mountain, a black, skeletally gaunt winged monster swooped down from the shards of Saturn, its eyes glowing with a terribly orange light. It's a mature Nabassu (FC I p 49). Be very afraid. While Nabassu are quite fearsome with their terrible claws and their numerous energy-draining abilities, it wasn't able to stand up for long against a novaing duskblade and two blaster wizards, and so it fled before doing significant damage.
Calvin was called away by the ship before the conclusion of the battle with the Nabassu, and the others took cover while Anon crippled the Orrey with a Volcanic Storm she had borrowed from The Gardener, enhanced by the power of the Crystal of Fire's Chaos. Not many machines can survive having a miniature volcano erupt at the middle of their complex thingamabobs, and this one rolled a pair of natural ones. Kaboom.
The party was actually somewhat surprised when the bunker did not obligingly collapse when the load-bearing macguffin was destroyed. Mr. Jones was dropped down the elevator shaft (a second time) when an invisible demon dispelled his Levitate. Mr. Jones and Keldion made short work of the Glabrezu responsible, which Anon cackled madly as the machine was destroyed by hurricane force winds, flying rocks, and rivulets of magma.
Keldion didn't feel like fighting his way out, and so made his way to the surface with three Dimension Doors. Mr. Jones and Anon (who had collectively acquired the four pieces of the Wish Token from The Black Typhoon), took this opportunity to summon Azrazubiel and make their wish.
The Glabrezu appeared in a bath robe, holding a mug of hot cocoa (seasoned with brimstone), and greeted them. "So, how can I damn your immortal soul today?" They wanted the 25,000 gp in cash, but he convinced them to take it in spell components, explaining that rubies, diamonds, and whatnot were better than cash. After agreeing that "none of the people from whom the components were taken will miss them or seek revenge", they shook hands with the Glabrezu, who disappeared with a laugh.
They then heard the popping sound of an incomming teleport. Then another. And another. These were rapidly followed by wet squelching sounds, as they noticed that, in the hanger, it was now raining fresh, bloody hearts. Hearts freshly taken from the warm chests human children. Oops.
It took them almost half an hour to scoop up all the hearts. About halfway through the cleanup, a door opened in the hanger wall. The Gardner's TARDIS had returned, and Laura was ready to offer them a ride out. Jones and Anon, laughing and playing with their grisly bounty, offered her a couple of hearts. After all, "We've got plenty to spare!" She stared at the carnage in abject terror for several seconds before wordlessly closing the door.
Loot:
17,000 gp
Mark III Sonic Screwdriver (Counts as a Chime of Opening)
Wand of Cloud of Knives (SPC p ), 21 charges.
Wand of Dimensional Anchor, 7 charges.
Fez of Freedom: This stylish hat allows the wearer to use Swift Freedom of Movement once per day. It can also be used to cast Freedom, once only, after which it is destined to be lost or destroyed under hilarious circumstances.
H.R. Geiger Counter (use Detect Aberration at will.)
Everyone gains 400 xp.
Anon adds Incessant Annoyance to her spells known as a 3rd level spell. This works the same as Crushing Despair, except it causes frustration and annoyance rather than sadness.
Keldion adds Time Hop to his spells known as a 3rd level arcane spell, except that it has a range of touch, and automatically counts as augmented to his full caster level for the purpose of determining the maximum mass of creatures or objects he can transport.
Calvin and Mr. Jones may each add to their spellbook a single wizard/sorcerer spell of up to 6th level from a book that's not on the allowed list, subject to my explicit approval.
In addition, Anon and Jones can split the following:
25,000 gp worth of children's hearts, which will have to be painstakingly fed into the ship's vending machine a few at a time. This will presumably attract quite a bit of attention.
Anon is now Chaotic Evil, and Mr. Jones is now Neutral Evil.
