[RAY’S NOTES START HERE]
…. [first two days missing]
Meeting the old lady disk mage, Rhoda, from Summer Point, at the border town ruled by the “Tyrant”. Surrounded by ruins from another era.
She is in town because of the big disk over town, but then she gets interested in Pontus and where he’s from. And then she gets interested in us because we are from even further away. She wants to trade maps, get a safe route to Tortoise Back. She is concerned because she can’t read our minds to ensure that we aren’t lying to her. We agree to let her question us at the end to confirm veracity.
She is with a priest of the Healer. He’s max level. Rhoda is max level. Irosom is the cleric. Carrock wants to talk to him. Al will join that table. Efrim and Lackshmi talk to Rhoda. She’s been travelling in a party of three for decades. Third person is a paladin of Yoichig. She is the leader. He’s away on a special mission. He’s into the legendary adventurer of Yoichig.
She wants from us:
- Safest route to tortoiseback
- Safest route to astral plane (inner planes)
They rely on friends, scrolls, wands, artifacts to travel beyond the discs (she is a disk mage).
We tell them about the Bronze Arena, the warning about touching the dragon, and what happens when you do. Have you been to the bronze? No, but they have been to the Brass realm. She gives us a map. She fills it in showing which silver planes have brass realms, and she deduces where we are wanting to go.
She tells us everything she knows about a plane she calls “Ram folk”. It’s a complex ecosphere, the gate opens up into the realm of the ram folk. She says don’t even bother with them. They are ram-like centaurs, and mature around age 3, and don’t advance from there. That’s what you see from the gate, but there is a whole peninsula that has far-seeing humans, with one city state. They have one disk, so disk mages can go there. No colossi. She believes creators of the colossi inhabited the plane. This is the plane that borders the pocket plane, which is one planar west from the Colossi Homeland. You can travel from this silver to that silver plane, through the same gate node. The Winter Kingdom extends there. The Gate is guarded by the Winter Kingdom. They have similar trees.
How to get from the Silver to the Brass… there are a few ways.
- There are some winter soldiers that carry brass horns. When they blow the horn, a giant golem species appears, drags you in to the brass, and kills you. They are 18 feet tall, about 80-90 HD, insanely low AC. They dominate the brass realm but are not common. They ride giant brass hippogriffs, but the wings are not brass. They patrol the realm. They are like the colossi – hard to understand. They bear holy symbols of an ancient giant god. They seem to have tasks, such as appearing when the horn is blown. Winter soldiers use the horn as a self-destruct/defense mechanism.
- Hill-sized honey comb structures. They are the homes of insects that live on Brass, but their home structure is dual-planar. Go there and cast a travel spell.
- If you look closely in the rivers, there are some metallic river grasses that are also dual-planar. Pass Plants at these grasses
She casts Illusion of the grasses to show us exactly what to look for.
Will the servitors attack anyone who doesn’t belong there? Yes, that is their experience. Immune to spells 1-6 level. Edged weapons will get embedded or get absorbed. Not immune to immortal magics.
Did you see any great structures or caverns that would be able to hold a great number of creatures? No, Brass is pretty barren. Eerie and unpleasant. *DISK MAGICS DO NOT WORK THERE*, according to Rhoda.
The weather affects your emotions. When it rains you think about death. When it pours you stop fearing death. The sky is reddish orange, and the sun is a more intense red.
The pocket plane is not accessible from the silver realm – only the brass. So we need to travel on the silver realm, drop down to the brass, stay on the brass and Gate to the pocket plane while on the brass. Once inside there may be more brass avengers, but we should be able to see into the bronze inside the pocket plane.
*Al goes back to the thief merchant to buy the Hammer. Gets her to come down to 40k gold. Warhammer +3, the target makes a ringing sound when hit. Can be used to smash the ground and create an earthquake affect.
There is one disk on the plane of the ram folk. There is one source of magic for vain magic, seems to have some kind of dragon theme. Maybe the source of dragon secret craft magic?
At the NODE that goes Planar West, on the silver realm:
Giant statue buried up to its waist, its head is decapitated. Lackshmi uses x-ray vision. AT the base she sees a Name: Klytie the Widowmaker. Looks like a storm giant. No “colossi style” rune/symbol. No hit dice, it’s just a statue.
Using the talking knife, she finds one ancient copper piece with a big bite out of it.
On the material plane, this node is nondescript. You wouldn’t know where one plane ends and the other begins. On the silver side there are two guards and you have to show your pass. The guards want to know what Lackshmi is doing. We present our passes, and our letter from the Viceroy.
“Unless you want to gate into solid rock, we suggest you gate here.” Shows a place in the grass. “The place on the other side is a slot canyon.”
They also want the copper coin. Efrim repairs it, and reads it. “Currency of the so and so empire”. We really want it, E and L offer them the Heroes’ Feast! In exchange.
We enter the slot canyon. It is flooded, but we don’t get swept away, so we fly in. We say farewell to Pontus, as he is staying here.
On the other side are 4 winter soldiers, standing on a cliff. They order us to come up so they can see our pass. It is raining. Efrim uses his new monkey tail to climb up the cliff.
Truesight: she is 17 HD fighter, the other three are 11th level and less.
They wear similar uniforms as per the Viceroy castle, but slightly different. They have feathers. She has a “horn sized lump” under her cape. Carrock shows her his horn of blasting. What kind of horn is that? Horn of Blasting! Is that the same as yours? “No, mine summons the brass avengers” that sounds awesome! “it is not. They drag you off into the brass realm and kill you. You blow the horn, they show up, and drag everyone in the area into the brass realm and kill you.”
May you never have to blow that horn. “I will some day”. Would you blow the horn because of undead? “That is more likely than anything else.” Can you tell us about the plane in this realm? “Similar to the undead of the plane where you just came.” They can drag away night shades.
Are there any areas we should avoid if we don’t want to see undead. “Yes, there are many areas.” She kicks the ground. It represents spots that are dangerous, she takes out a stick and draws a rough map of the continent. “avoid here, here, here.” This continent is dominated by a “grand canyon”. The outpost of the winter people is in the canyon. The outpost is a concrete monstrosity made to look like a mountain.
Nice to meet you! Good luck in your guarding! “Good luck in your journeys”.
We walk off out of their sight and we Lore for the plants to pass into the brass realm.
We decide to try entering the brass realm via plant. So we follow the canyon around, looking for the right kind of grass in the river. There is a cold rain coming down. We rainbow to the outpost, or pass through plants.
There is a unit of winter warriors standing out front, there are a lot of people coming and going. Efrim approaches with his pass. “Hello! I would like to buy a war machine…” “You’ll want to talk to the Barron”. (He’s five steps to the King). We have to wait for the Barron to return. “he’s out on a hunt.” “Boar? Night walkers?” “It’s possible…”
We are welcome to stay in the castle. “Are there people ‘of learning’ in this castle?” Yes, but we can’t speak with them until we get permission.
They bring us into the building, out of the main hallway (concrete and rock), there are paths and steps climbing up. A single staircase that never branches off up to a single room. The exterior wall is pure crystal so that we have a beautiful view of the landscape. We are getting locked in this room until the baron returns. Servants bring us food. Some is good, some is very bad.
Al finds a secret door that goes up.
After three days, they bathe us, and the baron appears in our quarters and tells us he will answer three of our questions.
Can you provide us with a map? “Yes, I could do that.”
Will you? “Oh, you’re requesting that I do? That depends on what you can do for me.”
Do you have trouble with undead here? “Yes, if you could help us hunt down undead that would be helpful.” Not to brag, but we did kill two night crawlers. “Ah, you are those people.”
We would like to meet with a “learned person”. “I will arrange that.” The Barron is not very friendly.
Our meeting with the learned person… “Librarian 11”. He’s a cleric. The first thing he wants to know is why people like us lie. Wants to know how we can walk around without being shamed by our existence.
If you go to the brass realm without permission, you will anger the avengers. The only way to get permission is from gods that are long dead. He knows of some entities still living that have permission.
Sometimes winter folk go there. Live there briefly. There are some undead there. There are no civilizations there. Only the brass avengers.
What other creatures? Not so intelligent creatures… animals, giant rams, birds, insects.
The servitors don’t actually come here, they just grab you from there, and pull you in.
We have a map of the winter kingdom, on this plane. The map has various structures on it that are important to the kingdom.
He talks about nodes, the pocket plane, notes that you can only enter it from the brass. The third plane goes to plane blah blah blah. Pocket is meant to be hard to access. It’s created in such a way you can only gate from the brass.
Third gate: Plane of Aching Rains. It’s not meant for life. “It gives rise to all kinds of agonies.”
Humans occasionally come from the southern plane.
Is there “summer brass” like summer silver?
There is brass material from the brass realms, that’s what the horns are made of. Has anyone tried to take a horn and make something else out of it? Are they magic items? Certainly magic items. He suspects it would offend the avengers.
What gods or goddesses do you worship? “We worship the winter god”. He looks out for his people. He brings the comforts of winter to all. He believes in trustworthiness. Sphere of matter?
They call themselves the “true people”, “people of order”, and “winter people”. They have gradations of “nobility”. Their station is passed by bloodline.
No druids.
They have libraries. “I’m the 11th Librarian.” That is generational. He is very proud. “I was born to be a librarian.”
Are there remnants of the summer people? Ruins, etc. they are all gone. The summer people were not devoted to fighting demons. We fight demons, and undead. So do we!
Upshots. He demands useful information in return for his info. Curious about what we are doing here. How to fight demons? He’ll tell us what he knows. If we want to go to the pocket plane, we have to go to a node… if on silver plane, slope of a dormant volcanic cone, very high, in the sky, there is a statue (varies by realm). In silver, statue of summer folk woman, defaced. In brass realm, it’s a giant saber tooth brass dragon, semi-melted (just like the statue in the brass arena!). The node is watched, often guarded by brass avengers. So good luck.
We strategize how to move through the brass. Consider FTP to a brass pass. Consider digging up a chalk tree to take with us, and it slaps away hands. Carrock cast Speak with Plant, and we get some interesting information from them. They want to have their seeds spread. The limbs are shaking, we realize that the ram folk are on the material plane shaking fruit off the branches. Al climbs a tree and communes with it in an elfy way.
The traufflin trees were swaying in unison. They were singing together. The chalk trees appear barren on the material side, but have fruit on the silver side. Traufflin trees have fruit and leaves on both sides.
We step through a mirror where we could see the ram folk on the material, right in the middle of 30 or 40 ram folk. A kid runs away, the men and women pull out spears and start running in our direction.
We sing songs, do some magic, win their favor. Old ram gives Al a spear, and returns an arrow. Carrock creates a hero’s feast and cures their diseases.
We return to the silver realm.
FTP to an entity with permission to enter the brass realm. We Rainbow to that direction. Land next to a site where an elk has been killed. There is a pack of some kind of animal like a displacer beast – they scatter when we arrive. The mountains still have trees, but it is getting barren. Carrock weaves between them up the slope of the mountain. Arriving at a basin between the mountain peaks, we see ancient ruins. And a cave. Water runs into a perfectly reflective lake in the basin. Tripod shaped stone markers in front of the lake, are covered with growth. Writing on the stones is obscured. Efrim and Al activate Trusight. Carrock starts flying over the lake. We can see into the material realm by looking into the reflective surface of the lake. The cave is seen in the material plane, but the ruins are not. We are flying toward the ruins.
A voice, in winter warrior language says “don’t go there, that is Seffera’s hunting grounds.” It comes from behind a big boulder. Carrock flies around the boulder, sees a woman who looks like a far seeing human, but she has gold hair. “Greetings, I am Heblios!” Efrim translates. “I’m not used to people giving their names”. Truesight reveals: She’s a GOLD DRAGON. “We come in peace, we are explorers”. You’re human explorers, but you’re in the silver realm. What brings you here?
“We hunt undead in the brass realm.” “So you come to me because you think I can help you pass the brass realm”.
I found the path to someone that I hope can grant us permission. “I can’t grant you permission but I can come and go. Some dragons were granted permission, and some were not.” The metallic dragons? “I don’t want to say yet.”
Efrim shows her his veins and says that we have brass blood. “I know where you got that – you are very daring.” Well, she like magic items, if you have some you are willing to part with…
Efrim offers her the original Blitz Blade. We also give her all the piddly stuff from the night crawlers. She invites us to our home for the day. She starts setting out food for us, ALMOST changes her clothes in front of us, and then doesn’t because she remembers that humans don’t like nudity. :/
She has only been here for a couple hundred years. “Have you ever met the one who sings beautifully?” Yes, she has met many great singers. Have you heard this? Carrock sings a faenare song. She has not heard it. But compliments it.
Do you go to the brass realm often? Sometimes, but there aren’t great advantages to going there…
What is there? The sky has an orange reddish hue… there are giant sized villages that still have traps set up. Not magical traps, but standard mechanical traps. Giant sized insects. Some animals. Occasionally the brass avengers. Rainstorms. Shooting stars every night.
If you are travelling and a brass avenger sees you do they let you pass or come interrogate you? They let me pass.
Are the avengers made in the likeness of someone? Clearly. She thinks the plane was taken over by dragon gods, and they saw giants as their servants. They are very ugly servants. Their faces look like skulls. Very skinny faces. Muscular biceps with scrawny forearms.
Have you seen them attack other people? Yes. I’ve watched them kidnap people from the other realm. Seen people in the brass realm be attacked. They patrol and have certain areas they guard. Some are assigned to guard certain monuments, they will not leave. Others patrol and they will pursue. They move quickly on magical hippogriffs, faster than a dragon.
Were you able to enter places that are guarded? Yes, she can enter some. They make it clear areas that she cannot enter – stand in the way.
Do you know the connection to the brass horns? My theory is that they were worried about invaders from the silver realm, so they set up a defense so they could be alerted and go to a place and kill everything that doesn’t have permission.
It seems to be very hard to fool them with magical disguises. She can walk there in human form and they won’t come to investigate. They just know. There are some human mages that have mastered dragon magic. They can enter the plane. It seems to be the same kind of magic that dragons use, not really secret school of magic dracology.
Have you ever tried to go through the node to the hidden plane? No, but she could try, for the right price.
The dragon magic using mages… do the avengers approach them? Yes, and when they see that they have permission, they leave them alone. And they can approach the artifact – the magic granting artifact. She cannot approach it.
If you go to the brass, and the avengers see you, do not just leave the brass to the silver and think you are safe. You must go all the way to the material, otherwise they can grab you and pull you back.
Do you know how to get from Brass to Bronze? She’s heard rumors that you can drink bronze blood… if you go to the brass, you will see monoliths (guarded by skeletons). The monoliths are dual planar, occupying brass and bronze. She heard rumors of gold realms, she don’t believe it. But has heard rumors that there are gold avengers in certain places.
***RETCON*** Lackshmi prays to Serram and tells him that we need a witness clasp. At the end of 40 days, right before we are ready to leave the small town area, the two kids we first met come up to our camp and say “here, a pregnant old lady asked us to give this to you.” It’s a jade eye that radiates immortal magic. That night L has a dream that she is in a silver ocean, then a brass lake, then a bronze ocean, then a gold cavern. She says it on the ground and in the Ancient tongue says “Immortals! Behold!”***
The “Skeletons” are probably undead warriors. The brass avengers don’t bother them.
Do you know the corresponding location of the monoliths on the silver realm? Yes, I could show you the location. (we could shift realms at that location and kill some undead warriors, we are thinking).
Do you know anything else about the undead warriors? Do they sit and guard? Yes, they sit and guard. Some other people have fought them, for a chance to get close to the monoliths. She thinks she might be able to take one of them, but not more than that, and they are usually guarded in pairs.
We visit the statue of the summer folk queen. It detects immortal magic – a preservation spell. Iustal looks around for Yoichig markers, doesn’t find them, finally looks under the dirt (earth travel), and finds them. He brings them up to the surface. He has to Read Languages on it. “We can’t pass from this level. Have to pass to the brass first, and then there is a node to a pocket plane that used to be the home plane of a god.” The adventurer that left the marker reports that back then there were brass immortal guardians at the gate. You have to find some way to get through before they kill you. “The other side is dangerous. This is probably a very old marker. It has 4 layers. Too dangerous to get to the bronze. It’s basically the size of a large island. Dominated by a palace castle, which was probably the palace of the god – full of enchantments and protections. You should be speedy.”
Node size here is about 6 acres. This is the node that is very exposed, on the slope of a volcano.
We find a crevice in the slope, cast Transport via Plant, step through, cast Invisibility 10’ Radius. We are miles from the node area. There are plants and insects. Red sky, daytime. Nearby there is a foundation for a building – 2 feet of stone standing. A large structure, at one time. No large brass creatures in the sky from where we see. We leave the crevice, fly toward the area we think there might be gate guardians. Fly over a ridge, carefully. There is a bramble of vines, with a creature rooting in it. Looks like a gnoll on all fours. Has 4 HD. Humanish creature, acting like a beast. Close to the ridge, there are ordered stones that look like the reminents of a road. Peeking over the ridge, there is a volcanic cone, and we see a familiar dragon statue with a huge dong, rearing up like it’s about to fight. There is molten lava.
We see the brass avengers. Bulbous eyes, narrow jaws. 18 feet tall with shields, covered in symbols. We see an avenger dismounted next to a hippogriff. Two more on mounts, scattered in the space. We are way up in the air over the valley, moving toward the node. They are moving, rotating. We wait and watch. Every 40 minutes or so, they change positions. We touch the ground and one of them turns in our direction. We immediately pass plants back to the silver realm, and transport via a mirror back to the material plane.
We track to a monolith guarded by two undead warriors. We pop in and drop them quickly. The monolith is made of marble. It is covered in words. It’s words of freedom, apparently to teach undead to value independence so they can’t be controlled. Place here by Thorn? It is dual planar, and if you touch it and cast Travel you can move from the brass to the bronze realm, if it were in a place where there was a bronze realm.
We return to the gold dragon woman, and she arranges a meeting for us with the dragon magic mages. We talk a lot about how to navigate on the brass realm with the avengers. Then we trade magic items and cash.
We execute the plan, travel in, approach the node, enter the node area, attract the brass avengers, cast Furtive Gate, and zip through one segment before it is able to snag us.
We gate into the pocket plane, and pass plants 100 miles away, over the ocean. WE approach the shore. Al casts immortal eye and surveys the land. Looks at the palace castle. Looks closer at the GOLD ARENA, which, as it turns out, is in the bronze realm. There is a statue in the center. It is gold. It detects as 180 hit dice.
We are near a broken temple, looking into the bronze realm, there is a destroyed drolem on the spot.
When we look into the silver realm, we see shepards, giant skeletons playing games. The skeletons exist on all realms we can see into.
We are about to move to a different location, when the rain stops, and we see a giant sit up, about ½ mile away. It was laying on the ground. It flies away, we follow it to its home. We knock on the door, it swings open, and a spectre-like giant is staring at us. We use the rod of communication, and ask to speak with it. It invites us inside, treats us to hospitality, and starts to answer our questions.
We talk about the language of freedom.
We talk about the giant god servant. If you beat it in combat, you can drink its blood. Some entities have defeated it. Sometimes gods come here. A simple man came here and beat the statue in combat, a few centuries ago. In mage form. Fought it with a staff. If you drink it’s blood you can pass into the gold realm. Dark leather. Weak jaw. Mostly pink skin. Human.
There are many other friendly fellows here. Gives us some directions on places to avoid, and places we might find friends. He was on the material, then spent a long time on the brass before coming here. On the material there are a lot of mindless undead. On the silver there are undead that have invoked the language of freedom, but it doesn’t work on the material.
Do you worship immortals? Not any longer. Used to worship a fire giant god. For a time worshipped Old Nyx against my will. Was under orders to worship her. He doesn’t believe that should count. They just went through the motions of honoring her. How did you go from being forced to worship Old Nyx to being free? Someone slew the guardians of the monolith, and then forced me to read the words until I understood them and could read them on my own.
Do you know anyone who lived in the silver well in life, and now exists here as an undead? He says “yes, she’s a small person like yourself.” He gives us directions to her hut.
The language of liberation… “It’s actually written in our native language. Learning the new vocabulary makes you think about it over time and liberates you. Gives you the power to be mindful and choose on your own. I was made to go and read the monolith, and practice it every day.”
The individual controlling him was another spectre from long ago. It’s long destroyed now.
We visit the person from the silver well… it is a nosferatu, a female, formerly a human. She is a druid, and maintains a garden. We ask her to recount her experiences and how she came to become liberated. Al attempts to share with her the joys of living.
For spectre: Who is the oldest, kind, enlightened person here? I could piece it together and find someone who knows.
Our giant spectre friend finds us a giant lich, a former cleric of Old Nyx. It is about 4,000 years old. We talk to it at length. It was in a group of 17 liches that were in the first group of undead to learn the language of liberation. The group was taught the language by two far-seeing humans, a man and a woman (avatars for Crem and Chyrsma). Once liberated, they began spreading liberation to more undead. The hitch is that if they move farther away from “the source” than the silver realm, then they revert, and begin to live in fear of death again, and react to their primitive instincts, fearing death, and act more like their unliberated selves. The lich is able to tell us in detail some of the people that have come to fight with the gold golem to gain access to the gold realm. One of the last people to do so came about 300 years ago. “a simple man” with a weak jaw. Later, Efrim makes the connection between a man of that description and one of the 27 godlings – THANOS.