On the 6th hour of the 6th day of the New Year, in the Principality of Brine, in the salt-scraping ramshackle village known as Endtown, our lowly townies played admirably by the DunjonCorp team sat. They sat and drank and lamented about the poor financial prospects. IF ONLY they concurred, IF ONLY THIS PLACE WAS NOT SO BORING
IF ONLY I HAD NO SALT IN MY NOSE
IF ONLY MY BLOOD PRESSURE WERE NOT SO HIGH
IF ONLY I COULD PAY OFF THESE EXORBITANT LOANS
Ahh, but what good is wishing into a tankard of ale-brine? is what my dear grandmother always told me as she drank her ale-brine
...and as if in answer to their innermost and verbalized prayers, Jojen the Cantankerous, a minor noble from distant Threshhold and a budding sorcerer offered the every patron of the bar the princely sum of let us say 5 GP a week to accompany him and his handlers (Chivas and Gorp) to Highfell in the mountains to the north, there to loot and explore in the name of civilization and commerce and magistotheurgetical science
And so they departed, aglow with the prospects of new livelihood but as soon as they stepped a-blinking into the sunny late afternoon there was a clap of thunder and a distant mushroom cloud and THERE! above the Great Salt Reach a spinning, wobbly, not-at-all plummeting chunk of Highfell has saved them the trouble of commuting by hanging there mysteriously in the air, lit from within and without by strange energies, shimmering hazily, defying reason and good sense
There she hangs and Jojen and his crew stood aplomb in wonder, mostly dumbstruck
There’pon with a giant CRACK! a chunk of the (mountain?castle?dungeon?) separated from the grander piece and DID to Endtown’s dismay begin a lazy descent to Aereth. On a trajectory with the very Mayor's crummy house from which the party observed the phenomena! At this point, a flock of Luftbaboons peeled away from the battle and made its way to the town and harassed the party who took some losses, of course, but nothing unsettling (it was Keith whose PC's died owing to random chance and it seems suspicious that maybe I do not like his PCs but such is not the case)
The party barked orders to the Mayor - evacuate the townspeople! And so it went - some calculations and they determined that 3 or 4 hours until touchdown and probably destruction of the town. A few hardy souls and the Salt Mercantile Guild guards stayed behind to assist with maintaining order.
The trusty spyglass revealed that a smallish battle between some cloaked figures was afoot on the parapets and crenellations - and ominously large parts of the ruin tumbled to the earth below (ripe for looting!). Enacting a foolish plan, the party and some carpenters felled some trees and lashed them together to make a climbable pole to reach ALMOST to the height of the bottom of the floating chunk. The party stopped on the way to sift the wreckage below and some spurious artifacts (a catsuit made of spider silk, a painting of a clown on black velvet, and something else which my mind does not recall)
The conniving rutabega farmer (Ashley's) latched on to the wires and ducts jutting from below and so the party climbed up, reduced by half owing to falls - Boris the soldier (Eli's!) was lost as was his gear. Even the rutabega farmer fell heroically and embedded herself forever into the salt flats.
They managed to alight on what I now name Cattohnus' Chunk, since it were determined that the tower nearby was his/hers/its, and also they looted an ancient statue of Arcantyl's female aspect of its fist-sized rubies for eyes. Keith has a thing for playing femmes fatales with quick fingers and avarice,. The rest of the party took cover from acid rain - this time weak enough but who knows, with all this purple lightning around, what might happen?
Knocking on the Wizard Cattohnus' door, they were greeted by a stone man more than 20 feet tall, and the muscular scribe (Keith's PC) left a calling brick, which presumed to describe their appointment. But there was some wait - an extradimensional one, at that, and during the wait a flock of Luftbaboons alighted around the party and harassed them, the biggest one even counting coup on the scribe who deftly boxed the winged mandrill's ears much to the amazement of the creatures who responded better to the violence than any gesture of friendship.
Bortak the Lieutenant Luftbaboon explained they were somewhat unnerved by the sudden disappearance and reappearance of their territory high in the sky and offered to take the party back to the ground... No sooner said than done and we approached the wrapping-up point...
Selling their loot, the party (6 zero-level humies) have accumulated enough XP for first level which is to say 250+100 after shares allotted. A tenuous relationship with a small band of flying primates, and it seems to the inhabitants of their grotty little agri-salt village that the party are heroes
Cattohnus' Chunk, instead of hurtling to the Aereth and smashing up Endtown, settled very gently and now only perpetually THREATENS to obliviate Endtown. Who knows, aside from a big stone butler, what horrors live within it? And what has escaped onto the ground to threaten the countryside?
TUNE IN TO WATCH
