On the 1st of February, the day started with the adventurers Oscar, Poco, Caicai (with one of his soldiers - with a sword this time) and Soldier Number One meeting at the inn in Trilo for breakfast. Those who haven’t yet met start bonding over the fact that they all know Sir Goldborn, who unfortunately missed breakfast for some unknown reason. After a bit they decide to go explore Ashen Island for treasure, but not before Oscar goes over with the goat Jolly to try and pickpocket Trilo’s magic translator, who is sitting alone studying at the inn.
As Oscar stands up, out of nowhere a magical glyph of blue light starts forming around the table. It begins to glow extremely bright and when it finally dims down our adventurers realize that they are not at the inn anymore. They are now standing in what appears to be the central park of a countryside and simple village. Around them they notice that quite a high number of people are also standing with glyphs of blue light fading around them. Perhaps 100 people. There are also a bunch of people that are not surrounded by any lights. These all have a look of extreme shock in their faces. Some are looking mesmerized at the strangers who just teleported to their village, others at an area in the sky above the houses. The party recognizes one of the people that was teleported as being Giorno Giovanna, the commander of Trillo’s troops. He appears to have been caught by surprise with his pants down when he was in the toilet. Soldier Number One takes note of a heart shaped tattoo on Giorno’s bottom.
Looking to find out what the hell is going on, the team approaches an old lady that was teleported along with her 2 grandchildren. She, scared, tells them that she was in Ristoro A before the event, but has no idea of what just happened. In the midst of the confusion, Oscar pickpockets all that the old lady is carrying in her apron: a spatula, proceeding to then put it back. The party then approaches a local woman, who is in extreme shock and is more worried about asking questions than answering any. In extreme panic, she faints. They then go ask information to a man, whose look of surprise is directed at the sky.
“What am I looking at, you say? Don’t you see it? Well, actually, ‘not see it’ would be the correct term in this case. The mountain!!! Our mountain is GONE. Also, what the hell is happening? Where did you and these people come from?” he says. After calming him down, he is able to tell them: “You are on the village of Feirun, sitting on the west edge of the Great Plateau. We are quite a calm and uneventful (well, apart from today) village of farmers and the sort. The mountain that is there, erhm, sorry, not there, is… was Everblue mountain. Beautiful blue snow it had. I have no idea where it went now”. “Ah, Longuria? Hum…. yes yes I have heard about it. Wow you have come from really far away. Isn’t that 1000 miles to the south?”.
The group then talks to Giorno, who fortunately has also heard about them. They inquire him about exploring the site of the missing mountain, but, while he seems interested in figuring out why the hell he was teleported, right now he is more worried about getting local information and, of course, going to the toilet. They then head to the town hall, looking for the mayor. He seems to be out calming the crowd, so they head next door to the local guard barracks. They find out that Feirun seems to be a place that strives also on agritourism, welcoming many people that are captivated by it’s peace, the Everblue and the astonishing views from the top of the Plateau. Still, it appears Feirun’s most beautiful and famous attraction are the sunsets!
A while later they attend a public announcement from the mayor, who is in a hurry to organize a search party to go look for answers at Everblue’s location. Interested people are meant to gather at the local pub. Our adventures are, of course, interested. At the pub they meet a couple who was teleported from Borgogazze and a gigachad guard from Ankh-Mar. A quiet young lady in a robe also seems to be there, as well as Giorno and 2 of his soldiers that were teleported with him. When the mayor arrives, he is happy to find these interested members and offers each 96 pieces of gold if they go and manage to come back with useful information. Worried about local security tough, he offers only one of his local soldiers. Caicai then exchanges his soldier for an additional local one. Thus a party of 14 is gathered in search of the missing Everblue: Oscar (and the goat Jolly), Poco, Caicai, Soldier Number 1, Giorno Giovanna and his 2 soldiers, Gordon the fighter, Jenny the monk, the thief Carla and her boyfriend Josh, also a thief, and the 2 local soldiers.
They start their short journey to the base of the mountain, 2.5 miles north. The path goes through a forest and already something they do not expect happens at the midpoint. Coming from the direction of the mountain, a woman in a purple dress is approaching them. She is blonde, elegant and seems to be extremely beautiful. She also seems to be carrying two bags around her and one of them is clearly emitting a yellow light from inside. The party is confused. The 3 thieves hide in the bushes (well, Josh at least tries to), while Feirun’s soldiers draw their swords. Giorno, on the other hand, is running forward, already in love with the woman. Unintimidated, she just keeps walking with a flirty smile on her face, now with her hand on the glowing bag. She says some words and…. ZAP, she is not there anymore.
Soldier Number One, who was at the back of the group, is the first to notice that the woman has just instantly appeared in front of him. One of Feirun’s soldiers is now laying on the ground unconscious.
“Hi! Tell me, do I look that scary?” she says. “Are your friends always like this, drawing their swords whenever they see a beautiful girl? Or is there something wrong with my face?”
SNO, unfazed by her powers or her beauty, replies “What do you want me to say? They are not really my friends, I don’t know what is wrong with them. Do you come from the mountain?”
“Mountain? You could be more specific, you know. Ah, and by the way, this guy here on the ground, well…. I didn’t like his look. But it’s fine. Really, don’t mind it. You should be able to wake him up in one day.”
“The mountain is just over that direction. Or well, used to be.” SNO appears to not want to talk about the soldier.
“What do you mean used to be?”
“There used to be a mountain. There. But now it’s gone.”
“Oh, a mountain is gone?” She laughs. ”Now you could say that is some really interesting stuff, couldn’t you? Ahah this day keeps getting better and better”. At this point the others start to realize she is there talking to SNO, but are too shocked to react.
“So tell me dear, have you ever seen this mountain?” she keeps asking.
“No.” says SNO, “But the people from the village told us so.”
“Oh, so you are saying there is a village back there? Ahah, wonderful. Seems perfect to me. You come from there, but you have never seen the mountain?”
“Well, we are not from there. We seem to just have appeared here.”
“So, a mountain is gone, and you also say you just appeared here from nowhere….” She laughs joyfully. “I am sure we can agree that that is something really amazing, right? You don’t see that everyday! Interesting, interesting!!! Really interesting this day has been! Ah, you were really useful. Please excuse me as I will now make my way to the village you are talking about. Bye bye.” She starts going and waving goodbye happily, but SNO still has some questions.
“So you are not from here? Where did you come from?”
She now looks back at him with a disappointed look. “Oh please, don’t be boring asking all those questions. If I told you all of that what would be the fun of it? Gotta leave room in life for surprise and excitement, right?”
SNO’s brain has by now processed the fact that she left a soldier unconscious in the blink of an eye, so he shuts up and lets her go. However, as she starts walking back, she is caught distracted for a moment by the thieves Oscar and Carla, who quickly decide to jump out of the bushes and grapple the woman. In an instant they put her on the ground under them.
“Ahahaha!” The woman just laughs, as the thieves are surprised at what they actually managed to do. “This day really keeps getting better and better!” She then pronounces another strange words and…. ZAP. She is not there anymore. Oscar and Carla’s faces are now on the dirt and the woman is standing in front of them.
“I hope this time you actually wouldn’t mind me going. Bye”. The woman leaves, walking gracefully.
Oscar gets up from the ground, relieved perhaps. After calming down for a bit, he/she realizes that, by accident (or thief instinct), he/she has stolen one of the mysterious woman’s bags. Not the shiny one though. The party, who also calms down, is too afraid to keep following the woman. Inspecting the downed soldier they also understand that they indeed won’t be able to wake him up any time soon. Interested in inspecting the bag, Oscar tries to detect traps and doesn’t find any, while Poco uses Detect Magic on it. He detects traces of common magic, but also strange magic of some really unknown origin to him. Everyone feels suspicious and scared, except Giorno, who besides all of what happened is still in love with the woman. He is the one that opens the bag, happy with the fact that it smells really really good. Inside there are some common herbs and some potions in small flasks, but other strange things as well. The bag also contains a pair of horns and a larger flask with an unusual pink liquid inside. They also notice that there was some empty space left inside the bag.
Jenny identifies one of the potions as having the effect of keeping one awake for an entire night straight. In a stroke of genius, the group takes the potion and forces it down the throat of the unconscious soldier. Amazingly, this works. The soldier is now awake. In fact, more awake than he ever has. The party decides to keep moving on. The woman’s bag will be carried by Giorno. He really likes its smell.
Few time passes until our adventures comes across something mysterious again. Not a beautiful woman this time, but a gate. A huge huge black gate stands in the middle of the road. Just a gate, well ornamented and with no hinges or keyholes. On it there is only a sign that says “THERE IS NO INTELLIGENCE WITHOUT WISDOM”. The party members are confused. They try to push it from all sides possible, but nothing seems to happen. However, when they decide to push it all together, the letters in the sign change to “STRENGTH IS NOT THE ANSWER”. The letters starts to morph into blue light energy, which then transforms into terrible monsters. Just kidding, they were not so terrible, they were simply 6 giant rats, with eyes glimmering with blue light. A quick battle happens. In 6 seconds the rats are disposed of without any trouble and the letters on the gate return to their original form. Without much more to do here, the group goes on.
They now reach the end of the forest path. Ahead they can see the base of what used to be a huge mountain 2 miles tall. Before they proceed they notice something else of remark. Standing beside the road is a tower. It’s not to tall and it’s leaning a little bit, as a part of its base seems to be buried in the ground. It’s well ornamented with colors of black, white and blue and seems to have two floors. The door is open, so our adventurers, although cautious, go inside to explore. The tower looks as if it had been shaken up; furniture and books are scattered around. There is a bed, a fire place and clothes that all seem to belong to men. The books there seem to talk about magic, although they don’t contain spells. Poco grabs “100 ways you should not use magic”. On the bottom floor there are also a desk and chair standing directly in front of one of the windows. On the desk there seems to be pages recording names of people and times. They also see an empty and a broken flask that seem to have vestiges of pink liquid.
Moving on another mile they reach what used to be the base of the mountain. It’s a big stretch of gray rock. Climbing it they are faced with a huge and cleanly flat rocky ground. It spreads around what used to be the 1,5 mile radius base of Everblue. It’s so flat it looks like it was cut with a giant sword. After walking for a bit they notice there is something standing in the middle of it. It seems to be some structure. They approach it without any problems and realize that it must be some kind of castle. Looking at it from the front they see two giant walls, in black, white and blue, stretching diagonally northwest and northeast. Between them there is a huge gap. On the left wall there also seems to be a hole and from the right wall there is what looks like the roof of a tower protruding from it. The adventurers approach, eager to find clues about what teleported them to this region and…..
Today’s episode ends. Some more details were given about the structure, but they will be repeated at the beginning of next session, which will resume exactly at the same point, without any time having passed. So, will they be able to find some answers about what brought them to the Great Plateau, about the missing Everblue, or about the mysterious woman??? And will they find a way to go back to Longuria??? Stay tuned for the next adventure ;)
Timekeeper's Note
The next adventure will be a continuation of this one, still taking place on Feb 1. After that, the game calendar will catch up to the real world calendar. The Timekeeper recommends ending next session at a safe place as usual.
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