wet, wet, wet

The only way we have found to return to Raora is by travelling to the plane of the water elementals and exiting from one of their portals on Raora. We believe we can reach theiir plane via the portals at the ruins and Valkor seems confident that he can navigate the plane to find our way, and tells us that there will be air for us to breathe.

I have to say I am dubious but Valkor has shown himself to be reasonably reliable and it seems we have little choice unless we want to wait some months for a ship to visit, which given the strange happenings seems an unwise choice.

As we have been travelling around the island a large, ugly brute of a dog has been following us around and I have befriended him not least because he seems to hate everyone we meet. He is pretty torn up either from being in scraps with other creatures or from abuse, and that makes me feel a kinship for him so I have befriended him and called him Happy. Given some time I am sure I can teach him some useful skills—for the moment I’m just trying to reinforce his hatred and mistrust of everyone since I think that’s the single most useful survival skill he can have.

We made our way back to the ruins and Valkor attempted to cast spells to divine the destinations of each portal which was apparently less successful than he had hoped. He activated one of the portals but could not divine the destination. Stimpy unwisely stepped through and we debated whether we should follow, despite the obvious potential hazard in doing so. While we were trying to decide what to do Stimpy emerged from the portal looking extremely ill. He described what he had seen and Valkor said it sounded like the plane the howlers had come from, though that wasn’t where their tracks had led; leading me to the unpleasant thought that the portals may shift, meaning that should we find the correct portal once, we would not be able to rely on it having the same destination should we want it again.

We found the portal we wanted on our next try, though we had failed to anticipate the problems of negotiating it. There is no fixed concept of gravity and we were just hanging in the air. Stimpy sent himself flying in one direction and then crashed into Valkor when he tried to get back. Valkor asked me to cast my spell to determine the area around us in hopes it would reveal where the portals are but as I suspected it just told me that there were no significant geographical features within range. Valkor suggested we return through the portal and work out a plan.

Happy was relieved to be back on the ground. I share his unease in the alien environment but at least I understand that it can be expected to be strange—I can only imagine what he must make of it.

Valkor insisted that we needed to go back to Red for advice. For apparently intelligent people I can’t fathom this obsession that Red is a useful source of information when he has never told us anything we didn’t already know!

Stimpy agrees with Valkor and for the sake of actually doing something I have conceded, but I have gifted the two of them with planks of wood on which I have carved “visiting Red” and suggested they just repeatedly hit themselves on the forehead with them, since that’s about as much value as speaking to the man himself.

We trekked back to the other end of the island and once more met with Red. On the way I taunted Happy with a little red-haired effigy and was very pleased by the greeting he gave Red when we met. Sometimes I think Happy is smarter than half our group.

I was surprised that Red actually made a contribution this time, reminding us that there was water pouring into the water plane from Raora, so there might be some way to pick that up. I groaned inwardly—it was something we could have, and should have, worked out for ourselves and now the other idiots would put Red on an even higher pedestal.

Back to the ruins again and along the way Kat and Stimpy collected bunches of leaves and twigs to drop into the water on the other side to look for currents in the water that we could hopefully track back to the portal we need.

We also roped ourselves together so that we could move as a group instead of each person having to will themselves around and ending up all over the plane. I also carried Happy; both because I hoped it would help ease his distress and because it would be all but impossible to teach him how to move there.

It took us a while to get the feel for making ourselves move, but eventually we got it more or less under control and Stimpy started dropping some of his little bundles onto the water’s surface and sure enough we could see a current that we could backtrack.

Eventually Valkor said there was a portal up ahead and we could only assume it would take us to Raora. As we approached it water started spraying at us which must have been the water that should have been filling the river on Raora. We moved into it but didn’t have enough momentum and we were forced back coughing and spluttering.

So we mentally created a sort of “running start” and charged at the portal. There was a brief period where we seemed to be underwater, then my sense of which way was up started jumping around all over the place and we fell into a muddy river bed.

It appeared we’d made it as the terrain looked right, but as well as the water elemental there were a group of humans and a group of lizardmen and it wasn’t really clear who was fighting whom.

The humans started to break off their fight and we followed them. The lizardmen also withdrew and the elemental retreated into the river source and safety.

Once we explained how we came to be there (not that I’m sure much of it was understood) we were told that the lizardmen had diverted the river flow we had restored, claiming it for their own and defending it energetically. I wondered how much of their zeal was due to our friend the shaman. The humans had been despatched to find out what had happened to the water, run into the lizardmen, and would now return to town to report.

We decided to wait until the next day and try our luck against the elemental. Valkor said that the elemental may heal from being in the water source, but it might not and given the vigorous fight we had stumbled into it might be sorely wounded and once we were recovered and had suitable magics prepared might just be able to finish it off.

And so the next day we arose and returned to the river. Stimpy had some magical flame ball that he dropped into the river source to flush the elemental out while Kat and I tried to pepper it with arrows. Valkor trapped it with his magical web which made it harder to hit with arrows, but gave us much more time to wear it down.

The frustrating thing about a being of water is that you can’t really tell how badly it’s hurt but all of a sudden it just melted away and we looked at each other in surprise and then relief.

It took us a few minutes to realise that killing the elemental hadn’t restored the river flow. The other portals had closed when we killed their elemental but this one had not and so we will have to find some other way to close it, which I guess will require a trip to Seawell and lots of reading and so on that I’m Valkor will enjoy immensely.

On the other hand I guess it will give me time to teach Happy some tricks. Like “kill”. Good boy!

Valkor

Valkor:
"...Of course, the first step was to figure out which portal was which. From talking with Red, I was able to prepare just the right spell for the task. I haven't yet perfected the spell, but it was at least able to allow me to figure out the command word for one of the portals. Stimpy crazily spoke the command word out loud and leapt through. I started to cast the spell again, in hopes of learning more, and seeing if it would be dangerous to follow. Fortunately, he emerged moments later, no worse for wear. He told me of a mysterious place, full of chaos and entropy. We decided that this wasn't the portal we wanted, and examined the next one."

"Again, I was not able to figure this portal out completely, and rather than experiment by walking through, we camped out a day while I rested so that I could prepare the spells again. This time, success -- I was able to determine that the other side looked like a large ocean. We walked through and emerged in a wondrous and strange location. It looked like we were floating in midair. Beneath us were calm seas. It stretched out as far as we could see, curving upwards at the edge of sight. I had expected maybe a pocket of air several hundreds of feet in diameter, a few miles at the most. But this place must have been at least a thousand miles across!"

"Moving in this place was disconcerting at first. But we eventually got the hang of it. Needless to say, such a large place was quite daunting, and since we couldn't tell where to go I suggested that we should go back and talk with Red. We did, but he wasn't able to offer too much advice, other than telling us to explore a bit more there. He told us to note that the other portal on our side would be pouring water into the plane on the other side. We returned to the site, but we saw a mass of rats there. These things bit into Stimpy as he went forward to try and calm them down. Diplomacy was obviously not working, so I trapped them in a mass of webbing, and the others went and slew all the rats. It was quite heroic, and Edmund seemed especially proud of himself."

"With that out of the way, we entered the portal again. Stimpy threw a stick into the water below, and noted that there seemed to be a slight current in one direction. I don't know how a single river, however large, managed to affect the current in such a large body of water here, but I was thankful that there was any sign at all. We traveled against the current a bit, and eventually came across what we wanted -- something that appeared to be a large downpour in midair. We charged through, fully expecting to come up to a very surprised water elemental. But instead, we emerged in the middle of a large fight between humans, lizards, and the huge water elemental."

"We immediately leaped into action. Even though we had just helped out the lizards not a few weeks ago, they still attacked us. I summoned a monster from the lower planes that made short work of two of them. I also blinded the water elemental overloading its senses with a spray of glittery dust. It was a furious battle, but it was quickly becoming apparent that our weapons weren't doing too much, and that it would be able to make short work of us once it killed our summons. We retreated, and resolved to come back to kill the beast the next day."

"We couldn't convince the remaining human soldiers to return, but we came back the next day well prepared. We first lured it it out of its hole, before trapping it in a large web, blinding it, and having our summoned monsters pound it into a watery puddle. Just as we cheered in victory, we saw several lizardfolk approaching. I tried to hail them, but Kat quickly interjected with 'we just killed this water elemental, and we can kill you...' That woman..."

Valkor

Valkor:
"...We talked for a few moments, and asked her if she knew where Miranda was. She said that she did, but refused to take us to her. However, she did agree to pass along a note. We told her to meet us by the mountainside in several days."

"With no other recourse, we continued to the ruins on the other side of the island. Just as we were approaching, we saw a group of people running away from something. It turns out that a pair of Howlers, dangerous, quill covered beasts from the Abyss, had somehow entered the Prime. They were attacking the villagers. We rushed forward to help, and we managed to save three out of the four of them after a short but vicious fight."

"The beasts left several of their quills in Glynn. He looked quite ridiculous, and then there were those quills in him. But who knows, sharkskin adorned with quills might take off sometime around here. In either case, our hosts led us back to their village, where we removed the quills after some screaming and yelling from Glynn."

"The next day, we visited the ruins. The whole thing seemed to be a circle of stones, with the stones forming doorways. The howler tracks seemed to lead right into one and disappear. The whole scene had traces of conjuration magic everywhere. I suspected that it was some sort of summoning circle. But there were no clues to how use it."

"We were stuck again, and decided to wait at the mountainside talk to Red. Miranda of course, did not show up. We went up to talk to Red, only to learn that he had no idea who Miranda was. Edmund seemed to be infuriated. Fortunately, Red seemed to be quite knowledgeable about the planes, and we were able to learn quite a bit from him. He seemed to agree with my own assessment: that somehow the the planar barriers were breaking down. It explained why the water elementals were appearing, why the Howlers appeared, and the presence shadow ship. However, he refused to point us to another person who would be able to help us out unless we first retrieved a bag that he left on Avernus, the first layer of Baator."

"It seemed to be far too dangerous for us, so we resolved on tracking down on that mysterious woman we met a few days ago. Glynn and Edmund seemed to be all for it, so we set off. Even though it had been so long, we were able to pick up her trail easily. After a few days, we encountered another beast -- this time a very large bear. Fortunately for us, I was able to keep it at bay with a combination of webbing, greasing, and fodder animals from the Outer Planes. Soon after, the mysterious woman showed up again. She seemed insistent to know why exactly we seeded Miranda out, so we told her. At hearing about the massacre at the lighthouse, she grew concerned, and admitted to us that she, was indeed, Miranda."

"We learned quite a bit from her too, and we planned to head back to Raora. However, we went to the village at where we left the ship only to find that our ship was gone! No one seemed to know why they left, so we had no choice but to consult with Red again. He suggested that we return to Raora through a portal in the Ruins. He said that the portal should lead through to an air bubble in the the Elemental Plane of Water, and we should be able to traverse it and find another portal that will lead us through to Raora, through where the Water Elementals came out of."

"I was quite excited -- I had never been to another plane before, and had only read about them up till now..."

seeing Red

And so we spoke with the queen of my heart. We told her we were seeking Miranda, and we told her of our encounters with water elementals on Raora. She reacted noticably when we mentioned water elementals but didn’t say anything. I figured she’d tell us what she knew when she was ready, and that was good enough for me. Good enough for the others, too, because they didn’t push her on it.

She said she knew Miranda. She didn’t offer to help us find her, but said she’d pass on a message. If she saw Miranda. And in her own good time. It was so kind of her to help us. Finally, a person I like!

Once we had a method for getting a message to Miranda we could concentrate on other things. We had days before we were due to go back to see what information Red had gathered, so instead we decided to check out the ruins at the other end of the island. A couple of days there, a couple of days back—there was time to look around.

Weird things happen everywhere. We were down near the ruins when we heard an unholy screaming and saw some people running from two ugly spiny creatures bigger than wolves. The things were unbelievably fast and as we watched they easily ran down one of the people and ripped him to shreds.

Despite the size of the things and all the spines it was a reasonably short fight. We came through it quite well except for Glynn who got himself spiked four times. With his blue sharkskin armour and the few odd spines just hanging their limply he looked like a bagpipes.

Just because I was carrying Stimpy’s wand of healing Glynn seemed to think I’d be able to cut those things out of him. I laughed and said I’d be happy to do so as I fingered my cutlass like a fine delicate knife.

I managed to suitably freak him out and he ran off to one of the locals asking if they could help him. One of them offered to do it. I could tell by looking at the dead beasts that the spines would be nasty to remove even with a skilled barber and sure enough Glynn was screaming his lungs out as the first spine was cut free, and then even louder as the second was removed.

I renewed my offer to help and clearly the pain had addled his brain because he took me up. I twisted the spines as I pulled them free but I guess Glynn had pretty much passed his pain threshold because I failed to get the reaction I was after and he even thanked me afterwards. Or maybe he was messing with me.

These horrors had sprung forth from the ruins and we were told by the locals that this was the first time something of this kind had occurred, though there were frequently strange lights or sounds.

We went to investigate the ruins. It was similar to a druidic circle. Except it wasn’t a circle. Some of the standing stones had fallen but the whole area was dripping with magic, or so Valkor said. We could follow the trail the beasts had made back to one particular pair of stones and we searched the area thoroughly, finding an old ring that Valkor also said was magical. He said it was all about inter-planar something-or-other but I tuned out.

There seemed little more to find here so we headed North again to keep our appointment with Red. The trip was uneventful and before long we were scaling the mountain again. We found him and he seemed surprised to see us. We asked him if he had our information and he confessed he didn’t actually know anything about Miranda—he just figured we wouldn’t come back. Damn people.

We told him about the strange beasts at the ruins and he seemed to agree with Valkor that it was whatever-it-was that Valkor said was going on. He said that we weren’t man enough to deal with what was going on; that it was some problem with our plane and if we could return some pouch he thought he’d lost on the first plane of Hell then maybe we were capable of helping to fix things.

We returned to the base of the mountain and set up camp as our note to Miranda had said we would be here if she wanted to meet us. We waited a couple of days and she didn’t show. We did manage to get in a fight with a dire bear and again we fended well for ourselves. I was particularly angry as I cut into it, remembering my poor father who had died because of Percy’s desire to show off.

I only wish I could have sent the dire bear to Percy. Maybe I should ask Valkor if there’s some way we can take advantage of all these portals to do that. That would be so sweet to have two or three dire bears materialise in his private chambers and splatter him all over the walls.

We resolved to go back to the woods to look for Miranda. Clearly the beautiful woman (isn’t that funny—we were so mesmerised we forgot to get her name) hadn’t seen Miranda. Or perhaps Miranda had decided she didn’t want to meet with us.

We went back into the forest and wandered around for a while before we found our former camp site. From there we followed the trail of our glorious friend as she wandered seemingly at random through the forest. It seemed as good a path to follow as any—we had no real idea where Miranda would be, and I figured we might see where she had met with our beautiful friend. She seemed in no hurry as she meandered through the forest and though she only seemed to camp for four or five hours at a time and we weren’t really trying we were gaining on her. As we followed there seemed no indication of her tracks crossing those of any other people and I started to wonder if it was possible that, despite not matching the description we had, our stranger was Miranda.

Before I realised how close we were getting we were in her presence again. And I was right. We spoke to her again and she admitted that she was Miranda. And apparently this whole thing seemed to be related to the ship Bessy referred to in the letter we’d found in the lighthouse on Raora so long ago. We also heard how this related to the lighthouse keeper on Raora. He was on the Bessy when it sunk, lost consciousness and then awoke on Raora. His son, who we rescued from the ghostly apparition of the King’s Eye has been trying to locate Bessy (not that he told us that!) and Miranda believes that Bessy is situated in a planar rift or some such and this is where all the current problems are based.

She wrote us a note to take back to the boy so that this time he might actually tell us what we need to know and we returned to our ship to sail back to Raora.

Or at least that was the plan. When we got back to where the ship should have been moored it was gone. The townspeople said it had been gone for a week or so. No message, no reason why it would have gone. They just assumed we’d left with it. Damn it, I hate people!