Fate in Flux Part 2: Pick a Card, Any Card

The Astronomer and the Floating Islands

With no astronomer in possession of magic dice on the island, the party got back to the ship and headed out into the misty constellation of floating islands once more. Repeatedly failing the navigation check, they ended up finding and exploring a bunch of random islands. One of them was just a large field of grass. It was filled with skeletal remains in suits of armor, with weapons strewn all over. The only thing even close to a living creature was a ghost. He said he couldn’t move on to the afterlife until he died. The party pointed out that, being a ghost, he had already died. But apparently that wasn’t enough, and the ghost needed his body to be destroyed. If the party took care of that, they could have his magical sword. Gore found the body among the corpses, and threw it off the edge of the island. After waiting for a few minutes, the ghost disappeared. Pololoz got the sword, which Gore, fortunately, hadn’t thrown along with the body.

Another island had a giant bird fighting a bunch of flying shark people. There was a giant bird nest, and in the giant nest was a giant egg. The shark people were trying to steal it. Gore and Pilskki, being constantly hungry, decided they could probably do better than the sharks. With the ship floating high above the island and the battle, Gore jumped off. He used feather fall when approaching the nest to slow his fall, and grabbed the egg, running for the edge of the island. The ship was just fast enough to meet him there. This caught the attention of the giant bird, which began chasing the ship. It was fast, so Gore threw the egg overboard. No eggs for dinner.

Another island had a stage where a tiefling woman was walking on a tightrope. Missing the DM’s intended interaction of recruiting her for our circus, Pololoz just insulted her, questioning why anyone would be doing acrobatics all alone on a floating island.

Eventually, the group got tired of exploring the islands and just moved on from any island that didn’t seem to have astronomers on it. Then they spotted an island with a giant tree. In the tree was a treehouse, and sticking up through a hole in the roof of the treehouse was a massive telescope. Jackpot.

The group parked the airship by a massive tree branch and knocked on the door. They were greeted by Vaelthar the astronomer, whatever he looked like. He invited them in to talk, and even showed them the die they were interested in. It was glowing blue with magic, much like the other ones. The real deal. But in order for Vaelthar to part with it, he wanted them to find and bring him a magical helm from a dungeon in a swamp. Specifically, the swamp that the meteor was predicted to crash into in a few days’ time. Gore, tired from all the island hopping, and not having filled his quota of chaos for the session, had a different plan. He asked if he could hold the die. The face on the DM suggested he knew where this was going, but couldn’t think of a reason why Vaelthar wouldn’t agree. Gore picked up the die, and teleported out the window.

The rest of the group thought the appropriate thing to do was to kill the wizard. This wasn’t a great plan, as the wizard astronomer was quite powerful. He happened to know fireball, and didn’t mind burning down his own treehouse if it meant beating the thieves. They blamed Gore for their losing battle, but Gore’s plan had been to fly away with the die and avoid fighting. Not that he had mentioned it to the others. But he did help by crashing the ship into the hut, crushing the astronomer and giving the party an opening to get on the ship and escape. Another successful heist. And they were about to perform yet another.

Robbing the Queen

The party flew back to town. I wanted another duck, which meant that Gore wanted to progress his personal quest. With the DM, I had previously fleshed out the idea of him looking for a scandalous letter. We’d decided that it was a letter proving his mother’s infidelity, which meant that his brother, first in line to the throne of Yeti City, was actually his half-brother, and Gore was to become king. Gore finding out about this was what had led to his “regicidal slip” secret, which in turn resulted in his status as an outcast noble.

Gore had no leads whatsoever, so he decided to simply ask in the local bar if there were any bugbears in town. Apparently, there was a golem cobbler (whatever that meant) named Korgle. Gore decided to pay him a visit, but not before checking out the bar’s mysterious door that led to the desert. This time, the door led to a goblin rave. It would seem that some strange probability magic was messing with reality. Gore and Pilskki headed inside, stole some food, and returned. Then Gore went to visit Korgle.

Korgle made shoes for golems. He also had the letter Gore was looking for. He couldn’t hand it over, because a soap maker named Danny Elfman was blackmailing him¹. Gore said that he and his friends already killed Danny Elfman, and so Gore got the letter and completed his personal quest. That was easy.

Meanwhile, Pololoz was painting their stolen airship’s hull so the Velvet Phantom and his men wouldn’t recognize it. With a natural twenty, she painted it the perfect shade of sky blue that would make the ship practically invisible when viewed from below. The party used this to their advantage in their next heist, which they got started on as soon as Gore returned.

They brought the ship high above the city’s castle. The plan was pretty much the same as when Gore had stolen that giant egg. We all know how that went, don’t we? Pilskki’s player wasn’t there that session, so he got to stay behind with the ship. The others jumped right off, Gore casting feather fall to slow their descent, or maybe they used ropes, I don’t quite remember. Either way, they touched down on a tower rooftop, surprising the guards. Gore pushed one of them off while the rest of the party hacked the others to bits. Pololoz learned the hard way that the magical sword she got from the ghost guy was cursed. Well, more like possessed. It dealt an awful lot of damage, but every time she swung it, there was a slight risk that the soul possessing the sword would take control of her. As she slashed the last guard, that’s exactly what it did.

Pololoz, under the control of some random dude, looked around in confusion and, upon figuring out where they were, opened the hatch in the floor and ran down the stairs. The party followed down into a stone corridor, and captured Pololoz. Talking to the soul possessing her, they discovered that this was a guy named Balric (my notes say his last name was Ghostman, but I probably made that up), who really wanted to murder the queen. In a strange coincidence, they just so happened to be in her house. The group made a deal with him that he could do so once they had what they came for.

Upon getting spotted by a guard in the corridor, the party lied and said the queen was expecting them. The guard bought it, and brought them to a waiting room. Opposite the room was a guarded door. Whatever was behind it had to be important. Realizing they couldn’t stay in the waiting room lest their lie be discovered, Gore opened the window and flew down on his giant fly to see what was on the floor below. It was the throne room, and his presence outside it seemed a cause for concern among the people inside. He flew back as if nothing had happened, and told the others that the jig, which had previously been down, was about to become up.

The party decided to rush out into the hallway and charge the guard at the other side, beating the hell out of him and making their way through the door beyond. They arrived in the queen’s personal quarters. She wasn’t there, much to Balric the possessor’s dismay. There was a pedestal with a glass dome, but the only thing on it was a business card from the Velvet Phantom. Somehow, the group figured out that there had been a die there, but the Phantom must’ve gotten there first. They would have to pay him another visit.

On the bright side, they found a hidden path behind a bookshelf, leading to a room full of magical treasure. Other than gems and gold, we got to roll on the random treasure table, and that’s when all hell slowly began to break loose. Specifically, I broke it loose on purpose, cranking up the chaos level to new heights.

At this point, the other players probably had around zero to four ducks. Having never used a single one, and going out of my way to get as many ducks as possible every session, I had seventeen. I had to spend every single one to reroll our treasure table roll, but after seventeen rerolls, we got it. The deck of many things.

Out of character, we decided that we’d all draw some cards right then and there, and not reroll them unless absolutely necessary. Pololoz, who had managed to reclaim her body from Balric at some point, went first. She drew three cards. The first one got her a crapload of gold, the second got her a loyal companion. We determined that the companion was her brother, Brololoz, who suddenly appeared in the room. The third card reduced her intelligence score to one.

Now having the intellect of an insect, we decided that Pololoz could do no more than speak her own name and follow the most basic instructions. Äör’s player offered a duck to reroll the last card, but Pololoz’s player was fine with it. Almost too fine. From then on, Brololoz had to do most of the talking.

Äör lost all her valuables, then gained a deed to a keep somewhere in the world. Another card made someone she knew hostile toward her. Spoiler alert: it was Barko. Lee got the ability to magically undo any one event, and a cool magical staff. Then it was Gore’s turn. Gore also got a magical staff. Then he lost all his magic items. But since he was carrying one of the magical dice, Äör’s player used a duck to reroll. Then he got enough XP to level up four times. Finally, he got two uses of the wish spell. Seventeen ducks well spent, I say!

When they stepped out of the secret room, they encountered a group of guards. One of them turned out to be the man mentioned in the letter Gore found—the man who was secretly Gore’s half-brother’s father. With this information, Gore blackmailed him to let them go. They went back to the roof, and Pilskki picked them up with the ship.

Stealing the Helm

Even though they didn’t want to bring Vaelthar his magical helm, the party thought it would be a shame to see a magic item destroyed by a meteor, so they flew their airship to the swamp. It was largely featureless, but Lee spotted a stone staircase leading underground.

Parking their airship and descending the stairs, the party found themselves in a dungeon (big surprise). A floating coffin guarded the entrance, and the party beat it up. They all thought it was weird. Down the dungeon corridor they found a room where a dwarf was investigating an old scroll. He said his name was Bjorg. He was in the dungeon looking for a specific scroll, and he was trying to figure out if this was it. Gore took a look, and determined that it was a scroll of eternal life, a homebrew spell that lets you prevent someone from aging and dying of natural means. It came with the bonus that if you cast it on someone dead, they’d first get brought back to life, and then be prevented from aging. That was the spell Bjorg was looking for. The party offered him a ride back to town in their airship, which he gladly accepted once the party told him about the imminent meteor that would probably kill him if he didn’t. But first, the party had to find that helm.

The helm was further down that same room. It stood on a plinth with a statue of a large, spooky creature behind it. Figuring that the statue would come to life when they grabbed the helm, the party backed off and let Gore deal with it. He was, after all, four levels higher than the rest. Gore grabbed the helm, and as the statue indeed came to life, Gore teleported back to the rest of the party, and they ran away. The meteor could deal with the statue.

The next session, Pilskki’s player was back. He also wanted to draw from the deck of many things. Due to the party drawing—with only a few rerolls—pretty much all the good cards, he drew one called void. His soul was drawn out of his body and trapped in an unknown object. This wasn’t very fun, so the DM gave us the hint that his soul seemed to have flown in the direction of the Inverted Spire, which was where the group was going anyway.

On the way, Gore asked Bjorg the dwarf if he could study the scroll of eternal life. Bjorg agreed, so Gore took it below deck where he used magic and ink to forge a non-magical copy of the scroll. Then he cast eternal life on himself and returned the fake to Bjorg, who couldn’t tell the difference. Instead of landing the airship to let Bjorg off, Gore offered to cast feather fall if Bjorg jumped off the airship. Bjorg thought that was pretty cool, and jumped off.

In an adventure where chaos is rewarded and everyone is insane, you might’ve expected Gore to simply let Bjorg fall to his death. Well, he didn’t. This time he actually had feather fall prepared, which he cast on Bjorg. It would later turn out that Bjorg was going to use the scroll to bring Valdemar the evil lich from Veil of Whispers back to immortal undeath, so by replacing the scroll, Gore had basically just saved the world.