09/15/2016: *This session begins in the aftermath of the battle between the heroes, the gods, the Vssgon and the “God Egg Hatchlings”.*
Funerals – the fallen heroes get new constellations created in their honor added to the stars of their home planes. Ireiga’s is added to the sky of the Azure Sky plane.
We wait until the gods leave, and decide to investigate the mountain entrance nearest the Maker’s Mark, which is on the back side of the opening to the vssgon lair.
We teleport to the Shrine of First Light, pre-dawn, and plan to rainbow in from there. There is a very accurate map of the world there, from ancient times. Used to be a lot more settlements than there are now.
Al marks the locations of the by-gone settlements on his current planar map.
We figure out the spot to stand when the sun comes up. When light breaks over the ridge… it strikes the roof of the shrine, and for two minutes, there are bat shaped shadows swirling all over map.
Al tries to detect a pattern. He can tell a few things about the physics of the light, but nothing special about the movement of the shadows.
Lackshmi inspects the map for the mountains, looking for differences, etc. The huge thorns, however, were much fewer before, and were concentrated around the shrine.
We decide to stay the day here studying the map.
There is an entrance dead under the symbol of the maker, and there is one in the valley (that one we already knew about).
Efrim uses the talking dagger, and finds weird stacks of ancient coins buried in the earth, and stacked in weird patterns. 10,9.8.7.6.5.4.3,3.4.5.6.7.8.10
Next morning we Rainbow 24 miles to the other side of the vssgon mountain. We go by pretty close to the volcano, passing through clouds of ash. Can hear the rumbling sounds of earth moving, and gasses vacating. We can see the lava oozing, or pouring down the sides of the mountain. Where the lava is cooled and dried we can see flecks of the sky green emerald shining…
As we descend into the valley, we see a glimpse of the big known entrance. It appears to be empty. Our rainbow continues past it.
We stop directly below the Maker’s symbol on the side of the mountain. (the symbol is a mile across. It’s huge.)
We create nightcrawlers, purple worms, and earth elementals to search for an underground passage. The last earth elemental finds it. Lackshmi and Efrim clear the passage using Runes of Matter, we go into the earth under a cloak of invisibility, and Passwall in the rest of the way.
We are in a large chamber, with writing on the walls. Roughly 150 feet in diameter, 100 feet high, a shallow cone, but dome-like at the top. Depictions of things happening. Circles, concentric, overlapping, etc.
Lackshmi uses Teng’s specs to read it. People cast some prep spells. She reads two names: Sken and Tres. Lots of numbers, measurements and algorithms.
This chamber seems to be dedicated to a dispute, between Tres and Sken. They had two different ways of explaining the motion of two celestial bodies. One of them thought the larger shape is a planet, and the other shape is a moon orbiting around it. There are algorithms support that explanation. The other one thinks that they are both planets, and have an elliptical movement through space. The dome has a star map on it, and it does not appear to be anything close to what is one this plane.
Lackshmi finds secret doors using the specs. There are two, and upper and a lower. We head for the upper one, which is 10 feet off the floor. It opens into a room that appears to be a storage space, with shelves built into the walls. The specs show no secret doors. So we head to the lower door, it opens into a tunnel. The whole place has been cleaned out, but there is writing on the walls everywhere we go. The people were obsessed with mathematics, and celestial movements. None of the stars match up to this plane at all. The plane that is being depicted is a solar system sized plane. That is very unusual. Only the Prime, Cluster, and Freedom are those types. Most other planes do not have “outer space”, they just have a local sun that rises and sets locally. So it’s curious to know what this is supposed to be. The Triumvirature is not described by these stars; it is also a small plane.
We contemplate if this map depicts some “original space” from which all other planes are a derived simulacrum? [RP, 10/9/16: could the “original space” be Pandius? Or some home plane of the Gods? If not Pandius, then a home plane for the Giant Gods? The DM said that only three planes are the solar system sized planes, but those are (clearly) only the three that we know of.]
We go in the other door to the Maker’s area, the main door that is well known. We find a dead vssgon worker in there. Efrim takes two weapons that were stuck in it (+2 spear, +1 short sword). Al takes the blood, it’s gullet, and other organs. The place is otherwise cleared out.
We fly to the main vssgon lair. There are passages that are sealed off, magically, and covered with a rune that says “Mortals Shall Not Pass”. The place has been completely emptied out. There are broken silver strands around, attached to the ceiling, the look like spider webs where the web was burned out or abruptly removed. It looks like the place was covered with them, but there are about 2% left. Lackshmi manages to break off one strand with her godlike strength, but even one strand takes incredible effort. It is unbelievably strong stuff. The piece is approximately 5 inches long.
Lackshmi uses x-ray vision on the blockage, sees dark tunnels on the other side, and bodies of recently killed vssgon workers everywhere. Some are cleaved open, and some have no apparent cause of death.
Al starts using Immortal Eye to explore the passages on the other side of the blockage. Following the largest tunnel (#2), the tunnel goes down about 5 miles into the volcano (dead vssgon workers strewn the whole way), and ends up in a very hot, poisonous environment where sky green emerald is flowing like lava, and glowing brightly. There are large emerald crystal formations, and pillars supporting the ceiling. What looks like one of the other tunnels (#1) also comes down to this area. Another tunnel branches off from the glowing emerald chamber/area, and goes east for miles upon miles through relatively straight but completely dark tunnels. That tunnel eventually splits off, with a large tunnel going one way, and a smaller human sized tunnel going the other, the eye follows the smaller human tunnel. The tunnel branches again and becomes crisscrossing tunnels, eventually, there is more light up ahead. We find a tunnel that appears to be coated in sky green emerald. [My theory is that the passage was once flooded with the emerald lava, perhaps recently? Why only this spot? We should investigate this.] (DM: actually, it wasn’t just one tunnel that was coated with a thin layer of skygreen emerald. It covered an entire half-mile stretch of intersecting, ant-colony-like tunnels, all of which were connected by an artificially excavated shaft that took the party up to the caverns with the kind statues.) Going up through a series of vertical tunnels, entering new chambers from the ceiling of the chamber below, the eye finally comes across something wrought by hand. Four statues of kings, crafted entirely from sky green emerald, stand at the entrance of one of the chambers. Continuing, eventually we find a settlement, a large underground city/collection of buildings. The buildings are covered in moss and plants, seemingly thriving underground, but recently killed/dying as there is no light here. There is a huge rope made out of those silver strands hanging here from the great domed ceiling. The end of the rope looks like it was holding something which has been broken off. The area below the rope, the buildings have been smashed, as if it’s a crash area approximately 30 feet wide by 300 feet long. Like an object that was suspended above the city was cut down, and it crashed and rolled, recently. Continuing off of another passage way, Al finds the entrance to the surface hidden in the wall of a slot canyon. It is hidden, but unsealed.
Al case Teleport Any Object and teleports there, pulls the moss from his underwear and drops it on the ground. Carrock brings Lackshmi and Efrim and the party comes in through the plant. We go find the statues of four human kings. The statues are made of sky green emerald, and they are magic objects ,enchanted with magic mouth, they say things about “welcome to the human realm” and about how humans will be slaves no more.
In the settlement, we inspect the crash site, and Lackshmi find tiny bits of the object that fell and Lores them. They are pieces of something called the “venom sun”. Carrock casts Speak with Plants (we rest a day and recover our spells first), and talks to one of the plants that is still alive – a tree. The tree says that there was a big glowing object in the sky, and that big spiders made the webs, and made the glowing object bigger over time. It was just recently cut down and taken.
We consider ways to take the remaining strand rope. It would take an artifact weapon to cut through the strands. We discuss ways to affect the stone that it is attached to, but truly the anchor points to the domed ceiling are spread out over at least a mile, if not more. SOLUTION TBD!
The settlement appears to be underneath a thorn/spur cluster that is visible from the surface.
Al theorizes that this settlement could be the very first human settlement, the specially created “firmament” that protected humans as a brand new species. Being underground would have protected them from the local dominant species: giants.
D&D session adjourns right about here.
FOLLOW UP: Do any of the four king statues look like NATANE? (good question, but the answer is no)
[RP, 10/06/16: I think clay had theorized that The Maker may have been a dragon ruler, but I have another suspect. I think the Maker was a giant god, and that humans were created in the image of giants to be their slaves. There are references throughout early human history to humans throwing off the yoke of the giant oppressors. It just makes sense! We need to know more about the ancient giant pantheon. Where is the center of Giant knowledge?