One Step Forward: Campaign Diary

In the earlier session, our heroes had been asked by their colleague and friend to track down the gang that stole her beauty. They'd hurried to the Lower Ward - their favourite place - and M'narr had bewitched the doorman of the Green Mill to persuade him to reconsider the tavern's ban on Githyanki.Inside, the trio quietly mocked the tavern's emotional half-elf troubadour, and watched in wonder as a group of elves bottled a tear from the half-elf and used it to open a portal. Asking around, the party found a convinced a female half-orc to tell them how she had been attacked by the khaasta gang after leaving one of the Lower Ward's seedier establishments. The heroes invited the half-orc to a local victims support group, and set off in the direction of their next lead.

Finding their way into The Mermaid's Cups, one of Sigil's more notorious table dancing taverns, our three adventurers saw an oddly bland-looking half-elf in a heated discussion with the barman. The party got the half-elf alone, got his story, invited him to their local victims' support group, and headed off in the direction of the White Casket, their next lead. En route, they spied some fleeing men diving through a portal. Time for that later.

In the back alleys around the White Casket, the party hear a cry and chase down the khaasta, cutting several of them down. The alley's a dead end, but contains an old abandoned tavern. Heading into the tavern, our three heroes discover a portal in the frame of an old, broken mirror...

 

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So there was a portal. What to do with it? Casting Warp Sense for the first time in the campaign, Ragados learns that the portal is two-way, and that the key is the breath of a ginger cat. M’narr then looks to the khaasta’s bariaur victim while 12-Bar and Ragados gather some Khaasta bodies so the modron can cast Speak With Dead. While they killed four khaasta total, the two victims of M’narr’s Thunder Step are without working mouths. The party asks the two extant corpses some questions. They learn the name of the Khaasta boss, and that the portal goes to the Outlands. 12-Bar, ever the Sensate, blows a whole question on asking a corpse what the sensation of dying feels like.

It’s late. While they could sleep here with little penalty, the party opts to rest at the White Casket. And here begins a wonderful puzzle.

The White Casket is a tavern for the Dustmen. The party arrives and the place is fucking dead. As you’d expect. The pickled Bone Devil on display is ominous, and Wilfrid, the ancient Tiefling barman, offers slow service at best, even with an undead assistant. The party orders drinks, three helpings of bread, and 12-Bar opts for the cheese and butter as well. Given they’re in a Dustman tavern, the bread is coal black, the butter a tangy Catoblepas variety, and the cheese is full of maggots. The cheese comes in slices so the maggots appear to be odd pale lumps; 12-Bar rolled well on his Nature check, so he learns that the maggots are likely from the Negative Energy Plane, where the Dustmen make their headquarters. After a time, the party falls into a fitful sleep upon the taproom’s chairs and benches.

The party rises early to buy two phials of cat’s breath from Tivuum’s Antiquities. They were offered a cat for cheaper but opted just to buy the breath. Wimps. The rest of the day is spent learning the dark of the Outlands and its spell keys. M’narr spends most of the afternoon in the Guvners’ library. He learns that spells require an oppositional offering to maintain balance, especially spells channelling energy from the Inner Planes. He figures that as an arcane caster, 12-Bar’s healing spells from the Positive Energy Plane would also fail without some similar offering. A weary M’narr trudges across town, having spent hours hitting the books, only to find that Ragados and 12-Bar are having the time of their lives gleaning chant and getting trashed in the Ubiquitous Wayfarer, and have somehow managed to learn all he knows and more.

Replete (ish) with supplies, the party heads back to the portal. In a flash of inspiration, Ragados deduces that the maggots from the cheese at the White Casket could work as a spell key for using healing magic on the Outlands, and the heroes spend several gold buying out the tavern’s cheese stores.  They finally arrive back at the portal, and M’narr opens the phial. It could well be empty. But it’s not. Starting from the point nearest the open phial, the space within the mirror frame illuminates, bathing the old tavern in a faint golden light. The heroes leap through. We leave it there.

Only we don’t! The suspense is too much. We play for another half an hour or so in the valley of Chariamur. Again, 12-Bar rolls insanely high on survival and they learn about the Khaasta caravan. We end it just after the first Mind Flayer’s head implodes.