May 14th, 2017

Continuing the Castle in the Sky
A delayed start for Mother's Day.
The adventurers of the day from left to right:
Nilo playing Kag the Human Magic-User
Original Matt playing Mirin the Human Spellsword
Chris playing Deckard the Human Ex-Fighter Thief and, by DM Suggestion, Merrick the Human Fighter
Sarai playing Desorna the Elven Fighter
Hunter playing Strix the Elven Magic-User
Zack playing LaVeya the Human Druid
And the DM once again playing Ydee, Catherine's Half-Elven Thief
The party began in Ivy's room in the Halls of Wandering in the Castle, having slept and regained spell points and party members who had been vanished by the strange magics of the Castle the previous game day. Or so goes the usual explanation for why characters appeared and disappeared.
After deciding to forgo an entire day's rest so the druid could do her healing and then sleep and regain even more spell points for her new level, the party headed toward the testing rooms where they could again achieve the orange ribbon and have a second orange ribbon in the party just in case. While the logic of the limited time available was not in dispute, the decision to go out with badly wounded party members was perhaps unwise. Nevertheless, off they went in search of treasure.
The journey toward the testing chamber was made difficult by an encounter with a phantom seeker. Its attack was unsuccessful and the magical damage done to it caused it to flee. With it chased away, the party could continue.
In the trail chambers the party was fairly easily able to bypass the wards and enter the rooms. Pulling the lever after using the frog token to bypass that door gave a second gold-orange ribbon to the party. With that complete, the decision was made to find the chimes and descend to the third level.+
As they entered the chimes room they encountered four figures. Without any hesitation, Desorna leapt to the attack, cleaving into one's breastbone and dropping her opponent where she stood. LaVeya was the next into the conflict and she cut up another of the figures with her scimitar, damaging it badly. After these two completed their attacks did the players ask what they were fighting. Upon being told that the opponents seemed to be elves, there was a sudden “Oh crap” moment for the party as they hesitated and wondered if they should have asked questions or tried to gather information before attacking. During the party's confusion, the uninjured female magic-user webbed the party except for the two that had attacked them who were too close to be affected. The uninjured male ranger attempted to charm LaVeya but she made her saving throw. The injured female spellsword backed away defensively from the attackers. Various party members began trying to break free of the webs with some success, and Kag attempted to try to enter into a parley but it was too late for that.
The next round the elves reacted first. The elven ranger moved over and picked up the bleeding out female and dragged her away from where Desorna knelt sobbing on the floor in horror at what she had done. The female magic-user successfully charmed Desorna and had her tackle LaVeya, preventing the druid from doing anything more. The ranger cast a minor regen spell on his critically wounded comrade as the injured spellsword yanked open the panel and hit the chimes in order for them to be returned to the first level. Once the party had gotten free of the webs they attempted to use the chimes to go to the third level, but they had not recovered to be used again. Half an hour after they had been used the chimes were ready and the party descended to the third level.
Once on the new level they made their way to the test of the sphere and prism. Activating that test brought forth the two shadow guardians who began their attacks, hurting Desorna in the process and for a bit leaving her teetering on the brink. The killing blow was delivered in the prism room by Deckard who now wore the red ribbon. With two down and a third remaining to be found, the party made it to the chimes room and descended to the fourth level.
On the fourth level the party began picking their way through an odd maze of rooms. In one they found a pair of heavily robed and hooded figures that ended up being mind flayers. The battle went quickly and well for the party with the first flayer leaving with plane shift and the second being cut to ribbons before it could follow. The search of the flayer's corpse revealed a goodly amount of treasure, and it was collected quickly before the party continued on.
Another room was triangular with a statue of a faceless humanoid with arms folded over its chest standing at the apex of the triangle on the far corner of the room. Strix walked up to stare it down and became entranced. Being careful Deckard walked towards the statue backward, stopping when next to Strix to push her over in an unsuccessful attempt to snap her out of it. As Deckard touched the statue he too became motionless and unresponsive. Kag came and carefully pulled Deckard away from the statue freeing him from his stasis before retreating away from the statue again. Deckard carefully examined the statue and after some less than revealing time spent in examination, he decided to try to squeeze into the corner behind the statue. In this he was successful and he found an imprint like that of an open right hand, in between the shoulderblades of the statue. Placing his hand in the impression seemed to do nothing, but when his hand was withdrawn it was blue. Encouraged by this in some ways, the party began to plan for their next steps.
And here we halted for the night.


Experience per character:
Kag: 1169
Mirin: 1169
Deckard: 1558
Merrick: 789
Desorna: 1558
Strix: 1558
LaVeya: 1558
Ydee: 789
This also had the first introduction of negative encounter xp since the party attacked potential friendlies who could have also been sources of information. Oops? Still, there was a positive xp total overall, so that was good, right?

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