The Outlands Odyssey Part 8: Towers and Tiacs

We started with the party watching the approach of Tiac Rami No’s tower. The tower, propelled by four colossal legs resembling those from a chicken, stopped close by, and Tiac hailed them. The short, balding wizard asked if they knew of any creatures selling magical bottles, as he wished to buy more. The party conferred, and walked up one of the huge, sinewy legs for dinner with the mage. They found themselves in a circular lounge, and enjoyed a pleasant (if unusual) meal. Tiac excused himself regularly during the meal, and 12-Bar heard him talking to someone upstairs. But when pressed on the issue, Tiac was incredibly evasive.

After something resembling a negotiation, the party decided to tell Tiac the destination of the Khaasta – the Forest of the Norns. In return, Tiac would transport the party to the forest safely. Tiac would get half of the stash of bottled beauty, and the party would get the other half. It was a flimsy agreement, but good enough. Tiac showed the heroes to their beds - real beds, for the first time in a week – before excusing himself to go pilot the tower. The motion of the tower made M’narr sick. 12-Bar and Ragados played at dice. 12-Bar tried to cheat, and Ragados noticed. And so 12-Bar played honestly, and lost spectacularly. 12-Bar also let slip to Ragados that he had never been in love before, and felt a bit self-conscious about this huge sensation missing from his life. Ragados said nothing of it, perhaps lost in thought over his own former companion.

It was a restful journey. M’narr was finally able to copy some more spells into his spellbook, though barely staving off motion sickness all the while. Tiac appeared intermittently, always keen to return upstairs.

Getting closer to the Realm of the Norns, Tiac’s pet monkeys suddenly rushed for the windows. Then Tiac burst into the lounge, a face full of fear, before fading into nothingness. The party saw the sky, and birds; and then they saw the ground rushing towards them.

They awoke in a daze, not too far into the forest. They noticed several felled trees behind them. Perhaps the Norns didn’t like Tiac trampling their forest. M’narr sent Hraparakk out to scout, and 12-Bar searched for Khaasta tracks. They followed their trail up onto the top of a colossal fallen tree that seemed to abruptly vanish halfway up the stump. Getting closer, it appeared the fallen tree vanished into an open portal. Jumping through with little regard, the party found themselves on the branch of a tree so colossal that it dwarfed even the giant trunk they had just been standing on. The heroes' long journey across the Outlands was finally over. They had made it to the next Plane of the adventure: they had made it to Yggdrasil.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Outlands: Planar Rules and Encounter Table

Encounters Check for encounters three times a day by rolling a d100. For the first roll each day, there is a 35% chance of an encounter. If no encounter occurs, the chances of an encounter on the next roll increase by 30%. If an encounter does occur, the chance of an encounter on the next roll that day decreases by 30%, to a minimum of 35%. Check for encounters once a night, again with a 35% chance. More information about the Planescape-specific monsters on these tables can be found in the AD&D book Monstrous Compendium: Planescape Appendix II. The below table is a modified version of an Outlands encounter table found on reddit . Roll 2d10: 2. Earth-berg. Floating chunks of earth and a scarred landscape remain after a chunk of land from the Outlands recently slid into another plane. Echoes of the other plane may remain. 3. Lost Blood War Patrol. A ragtag group of demons (MM), devils (MM), or yugoloths (MM) that fought in the Blood War and was cut off from the rest of the...
Read more

DM Resources for Planescape and Dead Gods

Looking to unpick how to run Dead Gods in 5e D&D, but don't know where to start? Start here. First things first. Realistically, I wouldn't recommend Planescape or Dead Gods for a first-time DM. Trying to stay on top of the adventure and the world is enough work without having to learn the rules of the game as you go. If you and your group all played Planescape: Torment and loved the world and know it well, then that's a bit different. Otherwise, run a simpler adventure or two first, and get to the stage where you're confident with the rules. Done that? Okay. So, obviously you have the adventure itself . I have a ringbound Print on Demand copy, which is fantastic, although 9 pages out of the 170+ have scanned badly, and some are illegible. Some copies of the pdf have this problem and some don't, so check before you buy. Either way, the illegible pages are all detailed in this useful free 5e conversion by Jarred Caldwell. It seems as if this pdf was formally a pa...
Read more

One Step Forward: Behind the Screen + Spell Keys

Spell Keys Spell keys are an incredibly vague part of Planescape, but like portal keys, they can be anything from items, to words, gestures, thoughts, spells, or augmentations to spells so they work the way they should. All planar spellcasters would realistically know that spell keys exist, even if they don’t know specific keys. If you want to use spell keys for your arcane casters, the Outlands is a good place to introduce them. The Outlands are a common enough area that you can give players the answers without them having to invest too much time; and the keys for spells all have a very low cost. Maggots, fire, some water, a handful of dirt. Find my curated Outlands rules here . PCs whose faction alignment or background grants them access to a library or information network (Guvners, and perhaps Indeps and Anarchists?) will fare best at finding spell key information; but any adventurer can hang out at a planewalkers’ tavern like the Ubiquitous Wayfarer and try and probe others for...
Read more