falcolmreynolds here and everywhere else

Here's my advice: get off this fuckin site and get off the internet I felt so much better when I wasn't filling my head with all sorts of random shit that literally doesn't matter

From now on I'll probably only be using this account to publicly mention fic/writing updates, I'm going to try and avoid wasting my time here mindlessly scrolling around when I have way better things to do like making sure my house isn't a complete mess

The party takes a day to recover from the Plane of Water in the Material Plane; they make some jewelry, Lorelai works on the postal situation, and Zackrow hunts for some pastries.

Their next venture into the Rift is an unusual one - Minato was dredging through Alexander’s basement, and consequently Lorelai accompanied the other Riftwatchers through.

When they head through, they find themselves in a network of massive, magma-filled caverns. They have entered the Elemental Plane of Magma, and now will play a high-stakes game of The Floor Is Lava while following the Nav-Box northeast.

After overcoming several trials and tribulations and several large rivers of magma, they discover a stone obelisk holding a glowing yellow crystal shooting beads of energy off into the caverns somewhere. Wary, the party avoids the stone (after looking the stone over and discovering that it’s drawing magic from the ambient plane) and continues deeper into the caves.

After a time they enter a cavern larger than any they have seen before - they cannot see the walls or the end, and inside there is a vast expanse of sand, but the sand glimmers the same yellow as the one in the obelisk before. The party doesn’t see any danger, but there’s no life here at all. They head inwards and all seems well... until they start feeling the effects of the desert on them. They are exhausted and endangered; they find the skeleton of a great white dragon sprawled amongst the vast glowing dunes; it contains a mysterious scroll, which they pick up and take with them. Minato rejoins the party as well, having bravely headed into the Rift when she realized her party had gone without her.

With their knowledge combined, the party realizes the crystals are what’s causing them to feel so awful - and they hurry onwards through the Crystal Desert, still taking exhaustion from the essence of the plane itself. Lorelai manages to protect one party member from the energy of the Desert, and they finally find where the Nav-Box tells them the Source is located and dig it out of the crystalline sand. It’s locked in a small box, which they take and book it out of the desert.

On the way back, the party decides to investigate the strange energy flowing from the obelisk. They follow it to a small tower, which they quietly investigate. They discover it to be a a mad sorcerer’s tower, and he is dead inside of it. They also discover four captives locked in cages being dosed with various levels of radiation. Two are beyond saving, and the party mercy-kills them, but two are able to be saved. The party loots the tower, saves the two living slaves, and leave - before breaking the cavern roof and burying the tower under a lavafall.

As they approach the Rift again, something bursts from the wall and attacks them, and at Lorelai’s urging, the party flees. They make it back through the caverns to the Rift when the beast (dubbed the Large Dangerous Thing) attacks again, and they run through the Rift and break the Source as quickly as possible.

The party made it through, with the slaves... with one exception, which they only realize once they’ve shut the Rift down.

Tiska didn’t make it through.

Kiliel’s Pearl is a game played on the Elemental Plane of Water. It was originally created to mirror the tale of a hero named Kiliel, who saved the plane when it was being manipulated by an evil dragon.

Kiliel knew that the dragon was using the Pearl of the Tides to manipulate the tides of the Plane to its own purposes, in tandem with a wizard who was similarly engaged. The Pearl of the Tides came from an oyster growing on a free-floating chunk of coral that traverses the Plane randomly, determining the flow of the ocean currents.

The Oyster had been stolen by the dragon and hidden deep inside its lair. Kiliel took their trusty eel mount and rode it to the dragon’s lair, pursued by the dragon’s servants. Fortunately, Kiliel took several passages that the knights on their big hippocampi couldn’t follow through, and they escaped into the dragon’s hoard room.

They stole the Pearl from its Oyster bed and escaped back out again, dodging past the hunting squid and knights until they reached the Citadel of Ten Thousand Pearls, where they delivered the Pearl of the Tides to their comander there and turned the battle. The dragon and the wizard were both destroyed, and the Oyster was retrieved and returned to its seat on the wandering coral, Pearl intact.

Kiliel’s Pearl, the game, is played by three teams. Each team has six members: One Commander, one Hunter, one Thief, and three Knights.

The roles are as follows:

Commander: Sits by the edge of the arena with a full 3D map in front of them. Directs their team and makes plans. Can see enemy Hunters and Knights on the map, but not enemy Thieves.

Hunter: Rides on a giant squid and is responsible for catching enemy Thieves, causing them to drop the Pearl. Can be blocked by Knights, but cannot do anything to them.

Knight: Rides on a hippocampus. Can body-block enemy Thieves and Hunters, and can use the venomous stinger on the end of their mount’s tail to remove other Knights from combat. Cannot otherwise interfere with players.

Thief: Arguably the most important role. The Thief rides on an eel, and is the only player small enough to fit through the tunnels into the arena heart, where the Pearl is originally placed in the Oyster token. The Thief’s job is to take the Pearl back to their Commander. Only Thieves can carry the Pearl.

The game begins with all three teams on equal footing due to their mounts. Teams can come up with their own strategy on how to play the game, but generally they go right for the Pearl.

The Pearl, and the Oyster token by extension, are kept within a stone block floating in the center of the arena. The stone has three paths in, filled with small obstacles, which get narrower as they approach the center of the block. Only the Thieves on their eels can fit through into the chamber in the center that houses the Oyster. There is also a tiny hole that sheds light down into the chamber so they can see.

If a Thief is caught by an enemy Hunter, that team automatically loses, as they have no one who can carry the Pearl back to their Commander. This happened in the Dungeons and Discord campaign, as Mir managed to capture not one but both enemy Thieves.

The games are usually fairly swift, but if they take too long, a non-team-affiliated player enters the field: the Dragon, returning from its hunt to its lair to find Kiliel still there. The Dragon is played by an armored elemental, very young kraken, or another beast of similar size and intelligence, sometimes even an actual young dragon. The Dragon means the game is ending soon, no matter what; the other players are hopelessly outmatched against the Dragon, and cannot beat it without delivering the Pearl to their Commander.

Using magic is discouraged, but not technically illegal. Teams usually keep to using Restoration spells on out-of-combat Knights and illusion or trickery spells to try and steal the Pearl from each other.

As the party gears up to head back into the Rift, they’re stopped by Lorelai. She knows the Rift will cycle to the Plane of Water soon enough, and she knows that would instantly kill them, so she’s going to help them be prepared. They wait outside the Rift until it seems likely that the blue beyond is the Plane of Water. Lorelai casts Water Breathing on the party, and in they go.

It IS the Elemental Plane of Water, and after a few minutes getting their bearings, the party heads towards the Source, as shown on their Nav-Box.

Tiska, in the form of a shark, takes the lead, towing the rest of the party. They slip by a distant kraken and reach what appears to be a large underwater city (though of course everything is underwater in this part of the plane). The city is made up of several large shipwrecks bound together, along with chunks of stone, coral, seaweed, and ocean detritus.

The party approaches one of the ships, one that looks somehow familiar to Mir, and find that it is the legendary Wormwood, the ship that was Mir’s grandmother Hana’s rival in her pirate days. That ship, along with its captain, were Hana’s archenemy. They forced her to work for them until the first mate mutinied and took half the crew, including Hana and her party, with them. Now the Wormwood is here in the Plane of Water.

An overjoyed Mir immediately heads inside, followed by her fellow party members. The party searches the ship and finds that it’s mostly been stripped, but there’s a few coins or pieces of cutlery floating about, and Mir knows the location of a smuggler’s compartment that the looters never found. Inside is an enchanted hammer, which the party gives to Brom.

When they return to their search for the Source, the Nav-Box leads them into this merfolk city to a large sphere of stone and glass. The party is baffled, but quickly learn from a harried door manager that there is some sort of game being played inside.

The game is called Kiliel’s Pearl, and the party watches one of the games to get an idea for what’s going on. The Pearl, inside a central structure, is fetched by a Thief, riding a giant eel. It gets tossed around between the three teams until someone can deliver it to their Commander.

(more on the rules and gameplay of Kiliel’s Pearl here!)

As they watch, the party realizes that the Pearl in this game is Source: a medium-sized glass sphere, small enough to tuck under one arm, filled with water and coral pieces, unbreakable.

Realizing that there’s no way to get the Pearl without getting backstage, the party talks again to the door manager. He tells them that they can talk to the game manager and potentially be allowed to play. Minato is certain that, once they’re backstage, she can steal the Pearl.

They form a team name, the Riftwatchers, and take the team color black. They meet their mounts - because every member of a Kiliel’s Pearl team, aside from the commander, is on a mount - and get ready to head into the arena.

The Riftwatchers face off against the Coral Ridge Kraken and the Eyes of the Deep, two teams who have played before multiple times. Even with this advantage, the Riftwatchers mange to snatch the Pearl from their rivals, capture the enemy Thieves with Mir as the Hunter, and deliver the Pearl safely to Zackrow, who acts as the team’s Commander. Minato pulls some swift sleight of hand and disguises a large quartz sphere as the Source, then hands that off to the game manager, keeping the real Source safely in her bag.

Remember Iridere? I’m back to editing it. I’m about.... maybe a third of the way done? Hoping to have it published in December!

This journal was found in the Plane of Ooze, in an abandoned house.

Entry one:

“Something has gone catastrophically wrong.

Gelian and I were trying to open a portal to the Swamp of Oblivion. Gel researched this for years; we knew it existed, but it was difficult to manage.

To open this door, you must stand on an island in an ancient bog, on a stone circle placed over a natural spring. At high noon during the spring equinox open a gate to the Plane of Earth. At the same time, in the same location, open a gate to the Plane of Water, using the material components for each gate as you otherwise would. If done correctly, this should open a gate to the Plane of Ooze.

We meant to go and collect samples. We made one simple miscalculation. We never should have come here.”

 Entry two:

“Gelian and I succeeded in opening a gate to the Swamp of Oblivion, and if you’re reading this, unless we made it back, then so have you. I’m sorry about this; you clearly underestimated the malleability and fluidity of the plane, as we did. We came through when we saw a break in the endless mud, and didn’t realize that the bubble we emerged into was moving, but our gate was not. We turned around in time to see our gate hit the edge of the bubble and shatter, stranding us here in this hellscape. We are trapped here, because while we could both open a gate to the Material Plane, we don’t have the components for such a spell. What fools we were.

The bubble we’re trapped in is quite large; I didn’t realize it was a bubble at first, not until Gelian cast his drift globe up to the ceiling and the light shone off the dark roof. We decided to shelter here until we can figure out how to leave.”

 Entry three:

“This isn’t the worst it could possibly be. Gel figured out how to cultivate plants here, and we’ve made a small house. I took a look at the drift globe and figured out how to upgrade it for Gel’s plants; it now looks like a miniature sun, because I think I linked it to the positive energy plane. A tiny sun for this bubble we live in.

“Gel examined the bubble. He said it’s like glass, but with a bit of attunement things can pass through. Interesting.”

 Entry four:

“The plants have gotten a little bit out of control. I altered the drift globe for the garden, but the rest of the surface of the mud in this bubble has become its own sort of beast. It’s formed a swamp. I mean, of course it’s a swamp… but it’s a swamp, a real one. A fully functional ecosystem. I find it fascinating. There’s actually amphibians and insects here, and I have no idea where they came from. Some of the creatures seem a bit off, but we aren’t on the material plane, so what can one expect?

“Gel made a special box to catch and study them, but it can only hold one amphibian at a time. I’m still searching for a way out.”

 Entry five:

“I’ve been watching the swamp. I hear strange things from there sometimes, what passes for the mornings since we figured out how to make the drift globe dim and brighten in cycles. Sometimes I see movement through the fog. I told Gel to be careful going in there; I don’t want him falling prey to some beast in the rushes. It makes me nervous. Gel said we could handle anything that came at us, but this is an Elemental Plane, and I don’t want to push my luck. He seemed confident, though.”

 Entry six:

“I don’t even know if Gel wants to leave. He seems to enjoy being here, how simple it is if you can forget the sky isn’t real. I’m still searching for a way out of here. I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t want to help me, if he doesn’t want to go.”

 Entry seven:

“A stroke of luck! While scrying for vortices today, I discovered a faint hint of gate-magic somewhere in the endless mud. It felt small, so I’m going to try and retrieve it.”

 Entry eight:

“I found it today. Well, what I think is today. I don’t know if our drift globe cycles are accurate to the Material Plane.

“We might find out if they are soon enough. I broke off part of the bubble and used telekinesis to force my way through the mud towards the feel of gatemagic. When I got close enough, after what felt like hours, I distinguished two different sources of magic. I found one, a tiny glass globe, and the other was a gate! I brought the globe back with me and found through a bit of experimenting that one can summon the gate to the globe’s location. But we’re moving, and the gate is static, so it seems to drift away from us whenever we summon it. If I can prevent it from shifting, we have a way out!”

 Entry nine:

“I was wrong about Gel. He was ecstatic to escape this place; he helped me with a bit of lithomancy, and we molded a setting for the little globe I found. It needed an entire building, which we crafted in the center of the bubble, and it fixed the gate into location; it’s not being perpetually summoned, because that wouldn’t allow anything to cross through without getting sliced to bits. We instead locked it so that its location is dependant on the globe, not the plane of existence. Dangerous, yes, but it’s working. We’re going to pack the house up and turn invisible before hopping through. I don’t know what’s on the other side, but I have a feeling it’s better than this.

Session Three (25 April 2017) 

The party, confident in their abilities after their success in the Plane of Air, are eager to head back into the Rift. First, however, they swing by the High Rollers Emporium, a shop owned by a charismatic lizardfolk merchant named Alexander Zahedi.

He and Minato do some quiet bargaining and the party manages to procure a few healing potions and a trinket or two from Alexander, though most of his inventory is hidden in his labyrinthine extra-dimensional basement, and needs to be found, and his potionmaker is currently missing.

After this brief visit, the team heads back to the Rift. They wait until it opens to another plane and head through.

They discover beyond the Rift a vast swamp, and as they step through, they step onto a man-made platform leading up to the Rift. Odd.

They trek through the muck, following the Nav-Box, and discover a small stone hut in the center of the swamp. Inside the hut is a complex structure and many magical circles marked out on the floor, walls, and ceiling, as well as many beautifully cut gemstones. Minato, always the opportunist, takes the moment to steal several of the gems, prying them out of their settings using Mage Hand. Unfortunately, this results in one of them breaking on the floor.

In the center of the hut, they find set in a man-made stalagmite the Source for this plane: A glass orb filled with mud and water, with a couple of clods of earth, and tangled roots. They take the Source from its setting after ensuring that none of the sigils on the floor are disturbed, and with their task complete they head back to the Rift.

Surprise - The Rift is no longer there when they return. Startled, they search the area and find no hints of anyone coming or going. Tiska does a flyaround and smacks into a wall - the outside wall of a massive bubble, containing the entire swamp. Beyond the bubble is only dark, swirling mud, the true nature of what they now realize is the Elemental Plane of Ooze.

A quick call back to Lorelai reveals that the Rift is still open on her end, and hasn’t changed at all - it’s only in the Elemental Plane that something’s gone awry. The team hurries back to the hut and tries to replace some of the gemstones, but there are a few that don’t have spares, thanks to both Minato’s bungled burglary and a jostling collision with another Ooze-bubble that knocked a few of them out of their loose settings to break on the floor.

Bewildered and now highly concerned, the team heads to the buildings marked on the map they found in the hut. There are two buildings, a shed and a house; they enter the house and find the remains of a journal (link) that tells the tale of two wayward wizards who accidentally found their way to the Plane of Ooze and became trapped. The writer eventually discovered the Rift and the Source, and used the Source to lock the Rift in place and escape the Plane of Ooze with their compatriot.

While searching the area, Zackrow also finds a terrarium mentioned in the journal, which he keeps to himself for the moment.

Once they’re done searching the buildings, the party heads for the odd location only marked, cryptically, “cave.” They find there a geode clearly brought in from the Plane of Earth filled with gemstones of all colors and types. Brom, Temp, Mir, and Minato all take turns harvesting chunks of crystal from the geode while Tiska and Zackrow stand guard.

Unfortunately, the two are caught looking the wrong direction unawares - the group is attacked by a couple of ochre jellies that take Temp down to pretty low health, though Mir is able to heal him up. The fight is short and brutal, and the team demolishes the jellies and hurries back to the binding hut.

Back at the magic circles, Brom shows off his lesser-known skills by perfectly cutting the raw crystals into gemstones that fit the empty settings in the summoning pillars. While doing this, he figures out how to summon the Rift in a closer location than it was previously.

The party makes a plan. They’ll all head through, Tiska helping each one, except for Minato. The rogue stays behind with a rope tied to her and a shovel ready to slide on. When she gets the signal, she grabs the Source and rides the shovel as the party pulls on her rope, then runs back to the Rift and dives through before it vanishes.

As she runs, something attacks her from the reeds - something that comes through with her as she makes her escape. The rest of the party is confronted by Minato flying through the Rift accompanied by a massive, quivering black pudding, which proceeds to attack everyone nearby.

The party, aided by a baffled and slightly terrified Lorelai, take the black pudding down, but not before it does some significant to Brom’s hammer and to Temp. Fortunately, Mir is around to heal, as is Justin, and the party destroys the Source and shuts the second realm from being connected to the Rift.

Zackrow also hands over the terrarium, the legendary Frog Box, to Temp.

A couple of NPCs were introduced in session two, so it’s time to add them to the roster!

Session Two (18 April 2017)

Lorelai takes a few days to analyze the data pulled from Peeper after its exploit through the Rift. During this time, the party decides to try and capture a small elemental, since there are troops of them roaming the city. Minato scouts around and finds an area with a couple of little earth elementals and sets out to capture one, a small earth elemental, in a dramatic encounter involving a large bag and some rope. The party hauls the captured elemental back to the base camp and studies it for about a day, to the delight - and confusion - of Lorelai. Zackrow chooses after some time to release it, not wanting to wait overnight with a small elemental in captivity, and it escapes.

Lorelai gathers the party together a few days later after fully sifting through all of Peeper’s data and explains several important things:

1. The Rift is most definitely connected to almost every single plane of existence 2. There are power sources within the Rift that seem to be maintaining that connection. 3. Seeking out and destroying the power sources should destroy the Rift’s connection to each plane. 4. Destroying the connection to each plane should cause the Rift to dissipate, never returning, and render the valley of Saintshaven free from harm.

With that, Lorelai asks the party if they’d be interested in going through the Rift in search of the Sources, which can be located with the aid of a little device she gives to Zackrow which is promptly dubbed the Nav-Box. The party agrees, and when the Rift cycles to a plane and stays there, Lorelai and her scientists prevent it from cycling again while the party heads through.

They emerge into the azure anti-gravity expanse of the Plane of Air, and rig up a rope so that Tiska can tow them through the air like fish on a string, following the Nav-Box.

The Nav-Box leads them to a series of floating islands, peppered with buildings but seemingly deserted. They touch down, re-asserting gravity almost immediately, on a lower island with an airship dock. Two paths lead through the cluster.

The party takes the left path. Minato, Mir, and Tiska find a tiny rock tied to one of the islands with a couple of interesting artifacts and some gold within; the party decides to keep the gold as a fund for Lorelai’s research, an unexpectedly sweet gesture.

On their second island, the party is stopped when they encounter a nest of arrowhawk babies and the protective parents. Any potential conflict is avoided when Tiska, Mir, and Zackrow speak to the giant birds, assuring them that they mean no harm and simply want to find the Source and leave. One of the parents, Aree!, takes a liking to them and agrees to help them fight off the enemies that she says are inhabiting the final and highest-up of the islands.

With this new ally, the party proceeds through the islands until they reach the Source. It’s hidden in a tree in the middle of what was once a great temple, and as Minato attempts to stealthily climb the tree, she is confronted by a small air elemental. Minato attacks it, and the battle is on.

The smaller elemental calls a properly sized elemental, which does some significant damage to Brom while he fights it in the center of the temple. Mir does her best to heal her teammates while Zackrow and Minato blast the elementals with damage, and Temp goes in fists swinging. Aree! eventually eats one of the elementals and Brom destroys the other, and while Minato fetches the Source from within the temple’s tree where it was caught in the branches, Aree! lands and speaks to the rest of the party. Minato finds, along with the Source, a tricorner pirate hat with a tattered arrowhawk feather. Aree! replaces the feather and the hat is given to an ecstatic Mir. An alliance is forged, and the party heads home through the Rift, leaving the Elemental Plane of Air behind.