33 — Catch-up

Lots has happened. I haven't written it down. Maybe later. probably not.

Very brief summary:

• Party headed south, meandering through the forest all over the place and taking five times as long to get anywhere as necessary
• Encountered an owlbear; Reef got one arm mostly torn off and semi-eviscerated. Killed it.
• Found an ancient bridge across a ravine, but unfortunately being used as a web-site by a big nasty spider. Ran away.
• Encountered some forest goblins, ran away from them. Reef got a poisoned arrow in his head.
• Got across ravine by means of fairy magic, found ancient forest road, encountered giant spiders. Reef stung and poisoned. Ran away.
• Followed road up into mountains, encountered spooky crowds of ghosty-things that gathered along the edge of the road and evaporated with the dawn.
• Spotted wyvern, ran away from it into a tunnel in a cliff.
• Entered an ancient elvish fortress complex, now derelict but sparsely inhabited by goblins (among other things). Found the remains of a warrior buried under a rock-fall, still encased in his Glass Armour (force-field) and with a busted Flame Lance. Got him out, nicked everything.
• Proceeded further in; balked by an abyss. Shot at by a goblin with a Flame Lance on the other side; chopped off Chase's arm just as he released the arrow that by an amazing fluke hit the goblin assassin right between the eyes.
• Got across the abyss by means of fairy magic; balked by door and almost tipped into abyss by tilting floor trap.
• Basil used his beanie-copter to fly over to where the goblin was and tried to retrieve the flame-lance; too heavy for him and he was dragged down into the abyss, losing the lance in the rushing water below and almost being swept away himself.
• Party make it through the door (don't remember exactly how) and move further into the complex. Encounter angry elvish ghost, Reef possessed. Party runs away back out to the mountainside. Reef depossessed when exposed to daylight, but now suffering from claustrophobia
• Back down the road, again encountering ghostly crowds. Concerns raised that they seemed to be spending a lot of time and not getting very far. Solution: fairy magic.
• Pandora transforms a bunch of birds into pegasi. Hilarity ensues as almost everyone turns out to be completely pants at riding, but considerable progress made until a wyvern decided that they all looked extremely plump and tasty.
• Wyvern killed, but party scattered — Reef crashed, but managed to avoid death by amazing feats of acrobatics through the tree-tops.
• Party re-gathered (eventually). Encountered Wild Elves; Reef and Chase both killed, hung up and eviscerated as a warning not to be so trespassy. They got better thanks to Fairy Magic™, but lost all their gear, including the amazing Glass Armour. Bother!
• Found remains of wyvern and hung around until scavenging tyrannosaurs had finished with it. Chase used some wing-bits and sinews to make himself a new bow. Then he made another new bow to replace the first one, which had turned out to be complete crap.
• Pandora made some new pegasi, since the last lot had turned out so well. Fortunately, this lot managed to fly all the way to the Cleft of Shadows without being killed, and nobody fell off. Found evidence of Sword Brethren having passed through the Cleft: a bunch of crucifixions at a small cliff-side settlement. Tallis eases their suffering by dive-bombing them with the treasure she'd been carrying around for The Poor; Reef and Chase both outraged, since they were The Poor.
• Made it through the Cleft and got their first sight of the Anforaois, the Great Forest. It is very, very great. They land at one end of a water meadow; a herd of huge beasts grazing down the other end. Ambushed by a hunting pack of velociraptors, Reef probably mortally wounded again, though I don't actually recall. He usually is, so it's a pretty safe bet.
• Having no better plan, they fly randomly around the hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of dense primeval forest in the hopes of stumbling upon their destination. They don't.
• Chase spots from afar a many-turreted manse on a grassy hill, surrounded by a topiary garden. Keen are the eyes of the elves, yadda-yadda-yadda. Usual debate ensues: "We should investigate", "No we shouldn't, that looks a bit adventurous". Eventually decide to take a risk (shock!) and take a look.
• As they over-fly the topiary park they encounter some kind of anti-magic shell that turns their pegasi back into birds, and everyone commences to plummet. Death appears inevitable for everyone except Pandora, but their fall slows when they get close to the ground and they land with hardly a bump. Reef and Chase, alas, are naked (their clothes being made out of fairy-transformed leaves), all of Reef's fairy-made weapons turn back into sticks, and Basil is returned to his base oscar-like form.
• They head on up to the manse where they meet Pandexter, a wizard, who feeds everybody and provides baths and new clothes. By a despairing deus-ex-machina on the part of the GM, he also provides a little of the equipment they'll need to have any hope at all of succeeding in their quest (stuff that was supposed to have been gathered along the way by means of "adventures", the GM having mistakenly assumed the adventurers would have been adventurous and not timid chicken-hearted fraidy-cats. Hey-ho.)
• Pandexter takes Basil off for "something special" before sending everyone on their way on a flying carriage, driven by an unpleasant and unsavoury mordrin (is there any other kind?) called Balthazar, who is tasked with protecting Tallis to the best of his abilities (though she doesn't know that). They get to the edge of the swamp and Balthazar unloads the carriage by the simple expedient of tipping it upside down and letting everyone fall out. Fortunately, they had been supplied with dandelion-bubbles that wafted them gently to the ground instead of being gruesomely killed.
• Basil turns out to be a rag-doll that crumbles away to nothing. Pandora and Tallis especially outraged, Reef and Chase outraged more as a matter of principle than anything. They decide to abandon their quest to avert the imminent triumph of evil over the entire world to go back through the gathering snows to find Pandexter and give him a jolly good telling off.
• Balthazar expends considerable ingenuity in subverting Tallis' commands to keep himself as safe as possible without actually disobeying the letter of the command. He makes several attempts to poison the two elves, but without success (and fortunately for him, without being noticed either). Reef continues to make threats against him. Balthazar sneakily fouls the food supplies and pees in the water-skins.
• Encounter a rather nasty wingless dragon. Reef almost killed again. Balthazar runs away.
• Find a cave to camp up in — signs of habitation. The giant returns in time to catch them pawing at his junk. Reef, the sentry, elects to attack first and warn everybody later. This proves to be tactically unwise as the giant smacks him into next week with a bloody great big club, and he nearly dies again. Fortunately the sound of his bones being smashed into flinders is heard by those inside, and they come out to murder the poor giant who was, after all, merely defending his meagre posessions from a band of ruthless marauding burglars. Poor thing.
• They hole up in the murdered giant's cave so that Pandora can recover enough strength to heal Reef. During the night, a pair of tyrannosaurs find the body of the giant and make a snack of it. They also smell the party in the cave, but are too large to be able to get in — they stake out the entrance after being dissuaded from anything more by Tallis whacking the crap out of one who stuck its nose in through the doorway.
• Reef healed. Tyrannosaurs lose interest thanks to the delicious smell of rotting dragon-corpse wafting through the trees. Pandora makes some more pegasi out of some crows and they fly off to try to find Basil. Nobody mentions Balthazar, who is left to walk home through the gathering snows.
• Several days of poor navigation follow. Eventually, more through blind luck than good judgement, they find Pandexter's hill again. The crow-pegasi are becoming fractious, as this lark is not turning out to be anywhere near as much fun as the fairy had promised. Blizzards close in.
• Manse appears to have been deserted and derelict for many years; a search turns up no inhabitants except one bobcat who panics while escaping from the terrifying appearance of Reef. Reef is not killed at this time. Party makes camp in the lobby, and make a fire in the tiled ornamental pool. Blizzard mounts in intensity.
• Calvin Hobbes, an ex-Sword Brother, appears out of the blizzard on a half-dead horse and seeks shelter in the manse. Nobody kills anybody else, a great surprise really considering the general level of paranoia. it must have been because he looked just like Andrew.
• More searching turns up an empty room with a tatty old wardrobe standing in it. In the door of the wardrobe is a Mirror of Opposition — Reef almost killed yet again. They eventually manage to cover it and look inside where all but Tallis see a narrow, steep stone stair going down into darkness. Tallis sees an infinity of stairs curving off into a chaotic void. Exploration ensues, in which it is discovered that there is some sort of time-warping effect going on in there; also, Tallis can see that each person ends up on a different stair going in different directions. Pandora eventually goes alone to see if she can find Basil down there, while Tallis and Calvin keep watch. Reef and Chase pass the time by engaging in some pointless vandalism.