Clan of the Cage (Date 1/12/30)

Winter was cagy, speaking in quick declarative sentences and darting her head about at every sound no matter how faint. The girl seemed uncomfortable and on edge, but it wasn’t until Ilyana transformed herself into an air elemental that she revealed why. Taking the druid aside, Winter confided that since meeting the Prince she had developed strange powers, most notably her ability to grow claws and a beak. Unimpressed, Ilyana dismissed the girl’s powers as having to do with animals, leaving the impression that – far from being shocked – the Prince would find the revelation scarcely worthy of note. Eventually, she did reveal her powers to Euwyn, who did indeed acknowledge them with little more than a shrug. Marty tried to postulate that a similar thing might be occurring as happened with him, that his powers were rubbing off on those near him. Euwyn admitted it was a possibility.

After the first day, the party had little need for Winter. Though she was acting as a guide, she confessed she had never been this far south. After three days, the party came to an intentionally, burned zone three miles across. It stretched as far as they could see in both directions and everywhere the savanna was dotted with ornamental skulls on small posts. They saw these as warnings, but pressed on. Eventually the frost-covered, open ground gave way to plowed fields, ringed by a crude fence. The occasional placard read, Clan of the Cage. They pressed on until they encountered a patrol, which they hailed. The guards responded with arrows. The party responded to these with volcanos and the guards fled. Moving forward, the party found a small village. In the distance loomed a large lattice-work structure that did indeed look like a giant cage. When the guards returned, they did so mounted and at full charge with a massive man at the head of their party. They called a wall of fire, but the man leapt right through it. As his riders circled, he stepped up to Hedge, turning aside the ronin’s enchanted blade with his metal infused skin and took the warrior down with a dervish whirl of daggers. Blood burst from the wounds wherever they struck. Ilyana cast burrow on Giada and the pair fled, hoping to link up with Winter who had escaped with the horses.

Behind the Barrier (Date 1/12/26)

A dragon! Cavalier boast and mighty assertions faded as the reality of the task began to sink in. The Prince of Malwan could not risk his life so foolishly. Strom himself had told Marty not to go, which was good enough for the young priest. “The barriers will destroy you,” Strom had said. That mean there were barriers, it was that simple. After much debate, it was decided that Ilyana and Hedge would go, given their unique natures and/or relative expendability.

All was going well, they had bypassed the dragon without incident and the ground had turned craggy. The great ocean was coming into view, but Hedge had been having issues. Things felt ephemeral. Sounds muted, sights foggy, even Ilyana seemed to fade periodically. All at once, as the coastline broke and turned to the northwest, a great cliff dropping down to the ocean, Hedge felt himself all alone in a silent universe. He looked behind him, Ilyana was gone, all was gray. He looked back, but the ocean had been replaced by the Black Lake. He was in Malwan, just a short walk from where the busy docks bustled with the day’s catch. He quickly tracked down Shelby and the two of them hurried to reconnect with the now unprotected Prince!

For Ilyana, things went slightly differently. One minute Hedge was there, the next he was gone! Sure, he had been talking strangely the last few days. Her disappearing, his hand passing through rocks and what-not, but when wasn’t Hedge talking strangely? She hadn’t expected him to up and vanish. She setup camp and waited for him to return. It was a long wait. To stave off bored distraction to which the girl was prone, communication was established with Marty and the pair were able to discern several facts. There was a barrier. It was invisible, but it marked a dimensional ward, each side its own separate reality. The fisherman on the ocean spoke of Malwan as a tiny, isolated city somewhere up in the mountains, and attempts to scry and send across the barrier failed outright. After a few days, Ilyana returned just in time to link up with the Hedge coming the other way.

The party brought Shelby up to speed and dissuaded her from attacking the dragon. Instead they journeyed home, took care of affairs of state and put together an expedition through the farmlands to the southwest determined to try the barriers there.

At the frontier fort, they acquired the services of Winter as their guide.

Wall? (Date 1/12/15)

Yuri laughed his heartiest, belly laugh once the Prince tracked him down at the theater and told him of the dream message. The mere thought that the Empire was inaccessible, blocked by some great powerful barrier seemed ludicrous. He had journeyed back in forth several times in his youth, and though it had been years since he’d been back, he volunteered to escort Euwyn and his crew personally, claiming a small, empire-run port town known as Lindenrock, lay just a few days from the great gorge.

The party’s departure was delayed briefly, however, as Marty felt the need to bolster the group’s divine protections, enchanting their weapons with holy power. While Euwyn and Hedge waited for that, Ilyana and Giada got bored and went on ahead.

The elven girls made their way to the gorge, using the forest as cover. They saw a great winged beast surveying the canyon on frequent flights, and chose to approach with caution. Managing to avoid the dragon, they descended into the gorge but found it largely dull and uninhabited. They decided to press their luck. Searching the forest south of the gorge, they found a great rent in the earth. A strange steam rose from the entrance, and the place was pungent with an acrid stench. No sooner had the cave come into view than the dragon emerged, charging the pair as if alerted to their presence. Ilyana became separated from Giada, but when she paused to reconnoiter, the beast dropped out of the sky! There was nowhere to run, but rather than attack, the dragon instead asked questions, revealing several odd facts. Its task was to keep people contained, but it didn’t see Ilyana as falling to that mandate. He also mentioned, that the Fey Queen had a similar duty. Urging Ilyana to return to “where she belonged” the dragon slunk back to his cave.

The Prince arrived and the elves related their findings, but rather than being deterred, Euwyn was determined to bypass the beast. Though Strom had warned ominously not days prior that the wards would destroy them, he ordered the party to head south to try to circumnavigate the beast.

Message Received (Date 1/12/8)

Euwyn wasted no time getting to work. Immediately upon his return to his tower, he set to unraveling the mystery of the tower ghosts. He didn’t bother to check in with the council. He didn’t stop to see Relania. He didn’t discover that the city had completed the grand road and officially founded the city of Giuseppe’s Ferry. Edgar had to come tell him that the magic fan he had been tasked with examining was missing feathers from a rare breed of black swan. Euwyn was all business! Of course, that didn’t help when inspiration was lacking.

Giada’s suggestion of trying to lure out the “pervy” ghost by tarting up Ilyana and lying in wait, was nixed immediately by the druid. In fact, it was theorized that they would likely need a newcomer, someone who hadn’t been exposed to the ghost before, to guarantee its appearance. They sought out Mjelde and decided to have a slumber party. The priestess was game.

Drinking wine and listening to music in the grand ballroom, the party talked the night away. They teased Edgar about his feelings for Lumi. They discussed the prince’s feeling for Relania, Gaston and Kenny. Mjelde gave back rubs. Ilyana wandered off and confronted the Shield Archon on the steps. For some reason, it didn’t attack her and its aura failed to panic her. They shared several long, silent moments. She named him Steve. She asked him about the ghost, but Steve simply knew it as an intruder, an intruder in a “state” he could not attain.

Eureka! Angels didn’t sleep! Every visitation began when the subject was awaking from sleep. Doubting it could be that easy, Euwyn called forth his most powerful sleep enchantment and targeted himself.

Suddenly the others disappeared, and Narlock was seated with Euwyn relating a tired litany of facts in a bored, distracted manner. Euwyn stopped him and told him he was there and aware this time. Narlock was astounded and spoke quickly. He had been trying to contact Euwyn for some time. They had met many times before, but upon waking Euwyn and the others always forgot the meeting, having not been in the proper mindset. He hoped this time would be different. The message was this: “Escape! Malwan was trapped. There was no land beyond the mountains, the chasm, the elven fort, the badlands. He had to use his magics, the power of Strom, his friends and allies, and whatever else he could find, and lead the people of Malwan (ALL the people of Malwan) to freedom.”

Suddenly the dream faded into a horrible reality. An unimaginable terror of tentacles and teeth tore into the party. Frozen in fear, they were powerless to stop it. Even when Steve joined the fray, he was almost no match for it. Ilyana wanted to help, but feared her powers would be useless. Knowing she couldn’t hurt the creature, she instead leaped between its blows and Steve, taking the damage that would’ve killed the angel. Emboldened Steve landed the killing blow and vanished back to his perch.

Graham (Date 1/12/6)

Graham cut an odd figure. His pale skin and red eyes seemed otherworldly, but his features were clearly those of human with a touch of elvish blood. His first words were in the strange, alien tongue of the tower, but when he saw looks of confusion he quickly switched to the Common tongue of Malwan. He claimed to be the caretaker of the tower, but showed little to no interest in greeting the party as visitors. Mostly, he seemed surprised to find them – or anyone – on the first floor. He busied himself with assessing the damage, winding up the one working robot to begin cleaning, as he avoided the parties many inquiries. “The Tower of Trials isn’t prepared,” he said, adding. “You’re too early anyway. How did you even get in?” For a short time, the party had him trading answers question-for-question. Graham seemed most interested in civic details of Malwan. How many cities did it have? What was the population? How long had the current king ruled? The party got little in return, and eventually angered Graham enough that he returned in heavy armor and attacked them. Driving them from the tower, though clearly taking pains not to kill them.

Using a haste spell to avoid the giants camped outside, the party ran to the hills with several stolen pieces of property (a pair of skulls, Narlock’s notes and some ledgers from the office). Their investigations revealed several things. The skulls belong to an elf and a human who seemed to live in the time around the breaching of the fey seal at the forest fortress. Both had been captured by a bright light. Narlock’s notes spoke of his plans to face the trials and his worries about the fate of Malwan should he fail. The ledgers contained a series of reports on the various racial populations of Malwan concentrating on the six races found in the display room next door (human, elf, boggard, goblin, duergar and gnoll).

The party had also made attempts to talk to the “ghost” which occupied what Graham referred to as “the guest room”. At first, it responded to queries, moving up and buzzing around the questioner, but seemed to grow quickly frustrated, retreating into whatever pocket of space its kind folded into. They made plans to try to contact the ghost of Narlock’s tower on their return to Malwan.