Casting Stones

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Scribe Notes

Summary

Adventure: Casting Stones
GM: Jono
Season: ~Summer 825 WK
Night: Starting Monday at 7pm on the 8th of December 2025 at Jono's.
Area: West of Carzala
Level: Medium/High
Info: Information from players for Jono
House Rules: Jono Quickness and Slowness

Party

Character name College / Skills Race Player Level
Lizette Namer Human Dylan Med/High
Lila Air/Celestial Human Kelsie Med/High
Uthgard Mind Hill Giant Anne Med/High
Johann Wicca Human Michael Haycock Medium
Dae Mind Elf Gus Medium
Elidon Ice Mage, Ranger Elf Michael Manning Med
Vixen/Arcadia --- --- Kita Med/High


Loot -

Employer
Mistress of Shadow (also known as Lulu Till). She is one of the local Guild leaders from Gugnir's Hope.

Scribe Notes

Related background stories on [A golden Eye on the waves] & [A golden Eye in the deep].

Of Missing Family and Earthly Demise, Keep yourself grounded!

The Commission

Mistress Lulu, as always looking to pawn off the people from the Guild. This time, being in a rush, she had no choice but to scout whatever adventurers were available in Seagate to join Lila & Boris, who the ones that were specifically requested by the commissioner of the Job.

Let’s start by talking commission fees, just to accept the commission we were offered 70 thousand silver pennies. Reinforcing the urgency to get people started and try to solve the "issue". For some of these adventurers this sum wasn’t much, for others less known (at least less known for positive aspects of their trajectories) it was a decent offer, particular when people are hesitant to travel with them.
The daughter of the Sultan has been kidnapped (or at least so it seems). Information about the potential perpetrator makes the 70 thousand pennies just to accept the commission nothing but chump change, for it seems Death itself is the prime suspect.

Not a lengthy detail of what transpired (or why) is known at this time, but between her ramblings (for she is rattled and tense), Lulu tells about the corpse of one of the horsemen having disappeared, nothing is known of which of the horsemen, or how they died nor where. But somehow, if we return its corpse to Death, the princess, daughter of the Sultan, might be returned.

Once we agreed on taking this chaotic and rushed up commission, she shared that she has had recurring dreams about Minotaurs, and a maze with a portal opening (or was it a gate? I can’t recall, I was too distracted thinking of the strange coincidence of a Minotaur, Boris, forming part of this adventurer troupe)

Mistress Lulu sent me with a staff member for a brief questionnaire about my satisfaction with the guild services. Being one of the freshest adventurers in the guild involves so much bureaucracy, sometimes I think we should just unionize to get rid of these useless detractors. (Dae, the scribe, does not know that this was just so that Lulu could safely warn the rest of the adventurers about the elf mind mage “do not let him do anything too stupid”, making it unclear what level of stupidity to allow, and which to block).

After a while, acorns adorned by a mage, for there were more acorns than mage, came to offer us buffing to deal with what is to come, Mistress Lulu aiming to be equally of assistance also offers us aid as well.
(Rank 18 Strength of Stone <18 EN>, and Lesser enchantment for those who need it) (Rank12 Strength of Shadow on us all <7 PS>).

We are warned to leave any “portal or dimension stuff” behind, since “we think they are at risk”. This truly, is becoming a burdensome commission. We are to part towards the commons of Adjepbar, and some of us would be transformed to dwarves to be able to access the district of the humble heights, particularly to visit the hobbits, where it seems Sultan is to be found, yet Lulu can offer it only to either the females, or the males. Our Party Leader chose the females to dwarvify. This transformation can last only 4 hours, so we won’t be able to walk to our destination if we are to make use of this transformation, hence we would depart from the Seagate Adventures Guild complex outside yard.

Dwarven scale armor is brought to them, while Lulu warns them “not to resist” the magic, you’d wonder what are the stories behind why they have to clarify what many would deem self obvious. Or maybe some misunderstood adventurers trying to be awesome created situations and now they warn anyone. While thinking that we heard the cracking of bones, and see how the joins of our companions fall as they take their new shapes. Marvelously, the Giant’s armor shapes with her, what is the point of powerful artifacts if they are not also convenient?. There is a lot to learn from these more seasoned adventurers.

They give us a bunch of buns in the cafeteria to bring as gifts for the hobbits. Some might have been eaten along the way We are led to a beautiful and sunny courtyard by Lulu, where they open up a big portal. Once on the other side we are greeted by people opening up a big bag in front of us with all the gems and handing it to Lizette, whom in courtly language is told “this is payment of your services, we are pleased you accepted our offer”. Addressing all of us now, we are told in hobbit elf dwarven and common “You are all esteemed guests now that you have accepted this request”. “Sultan is a problem threatening to destroy everything unless we cooperate”.

Adjepbar, bad decisions, and the client

Once we jog further into the city (some of us highly appreciative of the Strength of Stone cast by the Lord of all that is Acorn), we advance to parts where when we have both feet in the ground, the temperature drops significantly. Along the way lulu is told that “some imps have tried to harass hobbit guards” and some of the party manage to understand from overhearing their conversation, they also catch that the wounds we see in different soldiers are from Sultan, who out for potential frustration or anger is lashing out on them, but some of the wounds are from imps and creatures of ice who are taking advantage of the chaos brought by Sultan and are harassing them every now and then.

After about a quarter of an hour jogging, we reached a row of Dwarves standing on guard, we see him, floating above the ground while holding a sitting position with oversized puffy pants, a turban, and 3 staffs across his back, then standing up he asks “Are you the adventurers we sought? My master waits inside”. This was a sad moment for me, for a second I thought he was the sultan, and that maybe we could “take care” of him if things go south, but this was Huwmm, a magnificent Djinn serving the Sultan.

On the way going further to meet Sultan, Huwmm, guard the guard of Sultan says “BIG DONG OF FAMILIAR! BIG HORN OF FAMILIAR!” he addresses Boris the Minotaur once he inquired why the Sultan is wrecking havoc here and why Sultan was not changing size to avoid damaging the premises. Huwmm answered “They have made the grave mistake of not closing the circle, he can do what the fuck he wants!”

Ruined fountains to one side, corpses of hobbits to one side, dwarf as well, hobbit servants kneeling on one knee and one foot. Portcullises that have been peeled off or removed, same for doors is what we come across on the way. Huwmm warns us “I know air magic, so don’t try anything funny”. We do not even glance at the Dwarves that were escorting us, their faces must not be very pleased with what they see and their impotence to the situation at hand.

About an hour later lots of horrifying sounds of destruction approached from further inside, the horrified faces of the Dwarves and hobbits seeing the damage to the structure, and suddenly from the bursting cloud of dust, which was about 30 feet high, we see the Sultan, sitting on a cloud formed as a cushion. This is how most of us for the first time met Sultan, Boris the Minotaur and the Lila, are acquainted with him already it appears. How can Air plane creatures grow so big, that must be about 25 feet high, it's about three Ruby's high at least!

We spend some time talking with Sultan, basically the same debrief that Lulu gave us, in the midst of if Sultan says “That is mostly the Lila that I remember, so , you have come to save my daughter again!?”. She takes this opportunity to request him to give us greater enchantments to better help him. On the topic of why was he here he claims “They made a mistake, that is why I was summoned here, they have tried to… mmm …circumvent or double dip, instead of passing the information to Sireen, they summoned me”. Sultan was trying to get a message through to Sireen, to message the guild that he needed assistance, the person whom was getting this connection foolishly tried to summoned him decided to, again, foolishly, try to bind him.

Sultan detects that there is deceit among us, he detects that Lila specifically is not whom she appears to be! She removes the mustache she used to transform her Dwarf transformation into a hobbit, and both Lizette and Uthgard also release their Dwarven transformations just in case, since it seems it is not needed anymore.

Sultan has a portal open to where they lost track of his daughter and the people with her, but that portal was to close about 2 hours from when we met him. The portal leads to the earth plane, thus, his people were of no help to him. “She was carrying 2 chests of air, very pure air that the creatures of earth should not have been interested in, do bring them back to me”

Going through the portal we find strange markings across the grounds, which have …crystallized a column of air… the interaction of elements on other planes should not shock me by now after reading others' encounters, but seeing it first hand… is always exciting, but not always in a good way. Part of the crystalized air is turning to earth, partly crumbling.

There are strange dog gopher rat things that scour out of our way that are gnawing corpses, others dragging hands feet and harm to the holes..
Going further we saw various statues of what looked to be from a range of warriors, similar to the Humn, who guarded the sultan, even the staffs are similar to it, these statues were made of earth. A keen eyed companion noted that they are petrified from the ground.

The Death of Lila

Lila decided to don different shoes and hopped into the air, she just died, vanishing in thin air in front of my eyes, my warning not to have both feet off of the ground at the same time did come after she disappeared.

The Return of the not so dead Lila

It turns out Lila just disappeared from the plane and reappeared in the portal in front of the courtyard. Once Lila rejoins us (and finds me making a stone marking of where I thought she died, damn that was a wasted effort on my part) we proceeded, only to find 2 lines of 8 genies each, and what looked like stones… or earthen creatures, the top half of them seemed to have something strapped to carry people or goods.

Investigation on the rocks

My mighty keen eyed companions find traces indicating that these beasts were not earthen in nature, but were transformed by something into it.

Checking around some more, we saw that outside of the rows of Djinni, there were about ten dozen corpses of what seemed to be beardless Dwarves, slightly oversized, about 6 feet high, built like stone houses.

Boris the Minotaur casts necromantic magic, and the magics of the land swarm towards him, as if the necromancy of these lands have been either untapped for too long, or bolstered recently by something. The power of his necromancy spells seem to act about two ranks higher here.

Boris starts calling upon the souls of the fallen Dwarves, they in a guttural language tell him “Ugglar(?) made good and bad choice, to come and attach, he came to attack due to the riches” When asked who he worked for, “The people who lost the riches, cut the earth from my feet and I will lead you to it!!! We must warn the rest of the clan, that the creatures of ice took the riches!"

Uthgard (our giant) using their experience in reading the field of combat recognizes the order of the battle and directed us to the once likely to be the latest to die since that previous spirit had limited outdated information, the next Dwarf-like creature’s soul told us “The guides betrayed us!! Cut my feet from the ground! I will lead you!! The guide was the small one with the forked tongue, and a trident. There were some much bigger ones, but they came to us some time ago…I….I don't ... know… I… I think I died…”

Trying to get more information from the spirits they tell us “ I had some mushroom rocks and allussian beef… it was very good. They brought it the day before yesterday… Wait!!! They poisoned her, because she fell down, and then!... And then?... And then this thing came down! and it had a contract, it was terrible terrible, CUT MY FEET OFF FROM THE GROUND!”

The creature is described as having no form inside a blackened clothing with unnatural blackness with a huge curved blade across his back on a stick.

Uthgard (our giant) using their experience in reading the field of combat recognizes the order of the battle and directed us to the once likely to be the latest to die since that previous spirit had limited outdated information, the next Dwarf-like creature’s soul told us “The guides betrayed us!! Cut my feet from the ground! I will lead you!! The guide was the small one with the forked tongue, and a trident. There were some much bigger ones, but they came to us some time ago…I… I don't ... know… I… I think I died…”

Having gotten the information we could, we decided to focus on the two chests that seemed undisturbed but empty are above the palanquins, for we had little time before the portal back to Alussia closed on us. The chests seemed to have safeties on them in case someone tried to pry them off of the palanquins, but luckily, I summoned the little hobbit spirit in me and was able to dislodge them safely with some help! (Ha! Sonny would be proud!)

Back to Adjepbar City and the Sultan

After we come back through the portal, with both chests somehow, the hobbits… now some of them are dressed up to the nines! With turbans, groveling to the ground in front of Sultan. He claims one of 4 hobbits at his feet has betrayed him, and he is trying to figure out who to kill, maybe will kill two of them he says, while the hobbits quiver he tells us, that none actually betrayed him, he just wanted to get rid of two.

The Sultan threatens to heal Lila of her ailment, but she says she is not suffering, it’s part of her powers. He is displeased with her from siding with the darkness. Turning his attention to Lizette, he asks her to fix the statues djinn.

Sultan gives Uthgard the Giant two trinkets of spinning air, which he claims she can trade them in the Bazaar.
The Minotaur retells of the creatures of earth and about what happened.

Sultan tells us “Go to the bank, look for the toads, but don’t touch the water, there are cats that lurk near the reeds, if they touch you you would die”, and then to the hobbits he orders them to make bags “Make them from silk balmed baked clay.”

The hobbits come with the silk balm baked clay after about half an hourglass.

“HOBBITS! BRING US CHILLI!” Yells out Lila. Then we are told to put the chilli in our feet, knees and ass to disguise for the cats.

The random bags made of mummified baked silk are given to us.

Once we are back with the toads, we caught 7 of them (not thanks to me, and thanks to me not Lila either), we find out that Sultan has worked out which hobbits to kill, but then killed the other 2 instead. Lunacy or Ingenuousness? Psychotic regardless. Note to self, Windy things are even less reliable and even more fickle than the Fae. Turns out Lila and I did not come back alone, Mana leaches, they helped us remove them, but some damage was already done.

The sultan tries to hire Lizette in the future, impressed by her skills despite her mortal upbringing.

“You must go with your servant Lulu, and get an enchanter to track these creatures” Says the Sultan. We find out a bit more on why his daughter might have been targeted, turns out there is a debt between the Sultan and the Horsemen, and tricked by other Djinni, Sultan somehow got indebted to fulfill this position! But the Sultan came to an agreement with Death, of which we do not know the details.

“If we find an enchanter following things, what should we follow?” We asked, only for nonsensical responses to be given.

Potions were going to be given to us, but there was no time for it since we were rushed to the portal. We must go for them on the way back since we have to go after an enchanter, and we know not what perils lie ahead, but coming into contact with Death itself seems to be likely. ---
Buffs granted to the party in this episode: Rank 18 Strength of Stone on endurance (+18 points EN) (all) (Source: Acorn Mage).
Rank ??? Lesser enchantment for everyone that require it (Source: Acorn Mage).
Rank 12 Strength of Shadow (+7 points PS) (all) (Source: Mistress Lulu).
Rank ??? Greater Enchantment for everyone (Source: Sultan).

Items granted to the party in this episode:
Bag of gems worth 70000 Silver pennies.
Uthgard the Giant gets two trinkets of spinning air to use in the Bazaar.
Dwarven armor for Lizette and Lila (assumed to have been returned?)

Buffs & Mil Sci

Long Term (assumed always on)

Magic (caster) Rk Effects Duration Da Ed Jo Ru So Th
Greater Ench. here's hoping + to Res, Mag, Com, and S&S. Var
Fire Protection (Ru) 6 vs normal fire 7 hrs
Fire Armour (Ru) 6 28 pt ablative vs magical fire 7 hrs
Armour of Ice for Party (Eli) 12 8pt FT armour, -2 AG. -20 Stealth, 1/2 Fire damage taken for the next 80 fire damage, stacks with other defensive magic. 6.5h
Armour of Ice for Elidon modified by Ring Of Black Ice. (Eli) 12 +2 damage protection (ft & en), stacks with armour. +13 def in melee, +26 def in close. 6.5h
Resist Cold (Eli) 11 increases temp gague by 3, protection from hypothermia, -3 damage from cold attacks 12h
Self Only
Purification (Dae) 5 5 pts of MR. 1 pt MA 24 hrs ?  

Short Term

Magic (caster) Rk Effects Duration Da Ed Jo Ru So Th
Shadow Wings (So) 6 36 mph, 126 miles range 3.5 hrs
Walking Unseen (So,Jo) 6 7 hrs
Weapon of Flames (Ru) 7 +8 SC, +5 Dam, +8 dam vs undead, cold, water 12 min
Mind Speech (Da) 4 Range 70ft - One primary target plus 5 other targets 50 mins
Weapon of Cold (Eli) 12 +13 SC, +5 Dam (Triple Dam to creatures of fire) 17 mins
Ice Traversal (Eli) 6 2 targets gain +2 TMR of flat ice 140 mins

Misc

Herbalist Lunch/Broth


Watch Order

8pm 9pm 10pm 11pm 12am 1am 2am 3am 4am 5am 6am 7am
??? ??? ??? ???
??? ??? ???

Marching Order

Skirmish Formations (Front)
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Significant Items & Loot

Loot