Psychopomps

The party escort Bardbara the elf MILF back to Burrowdale Rock, to await (with the Harendons) the appearance of the moonlight bridge to Selune’s afterlife. It’s a brief wait of only 10 minutes (how would you know in the Astral where there is no time?).

We form up with Horus on the left, Rusty on the right, flanking a column of Harendon down the Bifrost. As we proceed, we see artificial shadows fluttering over the bridge, and through them, werewolves. Horus leads with Guiding Bolt and attacks. Lil’ Louie fires up a Beacon of Hope, which is nice. Rusty fireballs the bastards and kills a bunch.

The aggregate effect is that we save 47 of 49 of our charges. We randomly roll to determine who gets it. Astonishingly, Fucktail manages to avoid being selected! A random Harendon dies - he didn’t even have a name, does he even count? The other casualty is - Bardbara! Horus is not happy and casts a Chronomancy spell on the Werewolf, stopping it dead. Bardbara lives! That Mills & Boon cover is still going to get made!

The McGonnagall of Painting

Horus and Rusty head off to find Dennis and Louie, but are confronted by a huge beholder wearing a beret. His name is Xylophon, and he is suffering from a lack of inspiration for his pictures. He demands we tell him what we are most afraid of.

Louie is apparently afraid of voyeurs. Rusty says he fears what all mortals fear - the march of time, the slow inevitable procession from birth to death, and the helplessness we feel in our attempts to hold on the past and delay the future. Horus says he is afraid of being trapped outside of time and space. Which is ironic, because that’s pretty much where we are.

Xylophon is inspired and paints a masterpiece. He rewards us with 4000gp of art supplies. Rusty notices that Xylophon is painting on the back of portable holes. He blathers on about how he wishes he could paint like Xylophon does, but does feel he could do the medium justice. Xylophone gives him a canvas. Louie thinks he’s getting it to replace his portable hole, but he is sorely mistaken!

Xylophon then spots With peeking out from behind Rusty and instantly disintegrates him, even though Rusty told him not to. Rusty says he is very disappointed with Xylophon. With was a reformed Mindwitness, and deserved so much better. Xylophon is chastised, and with the help of the party, goes to sleep and dreams Wit back into existence (with some improvements).

Then we get the hell out of there before Xylophon can dream up anything else.

Louie pays happy families

Meanwhile, Louie is getting to know his mothers. It takes a week or more, and almost nothing happens.

Then a random Astral Dragon shows up to ask riddles. Louie gets one right, and gets an Lantern of Revealing. He doesn’t get any more right, though, and the Astral Dragon gets bored and flies away.

Dennis stays on task

Dennis, on the other hand, continues to search for Louie, but without much success. He avoids the Githyanki city, an continues around it. He sees that stupid arrow a few more times, which means that Ethan’s version of the Astral Plane is not infinite, and actually loops back on itself. Given that the arrow followed a different path each time Dennis saw it indicates that the arrow does not pass through the geometric centre of the Astral, and so would eventually pass through every point on the Astral given enough time - like the bouncing logo you used to get on televisions.

That means that any long lived structure (like say, a Githyanki City) would be smashed to paste once every millennium or so. Never mind, I’m sure that won’t be a problem.

Dennis spies a range of things in his travels, like:

• A Hippo smoking a pipe and wielding a blunderbuss;
• 4 gods sitting around a table playing dice with the universe. First, Einstein was apparently wrong, but Rusty notes that while they throw the dice, Ao controls how the dice land;
• A bit of earth that doesn’t affect Dennis (immune to poison), but he recognises it as Louie’s poison that makes people seek water.

Dennis finds a Moat near the bit of Earth, with a hovel on top. As he approaches, he hears a scream.

Kiss the Cook

Lil Louie, Rusty and Horus put some distance between themselves and the sleeping Xylophon, then get some rest themselves. Rusty spends part of the night designing booster packs of some sort for Wit - his movement speed of 20’ is insufficient.

When we move on again, we spy a Githyanki skiff in the distance, but it doesn’t look as though it is operational. It is fairly permanently moored to a rock, and the deck is covered in out-sized cooking implements that would prevent it from being sailed. Standing before a large cauldron is a huge Githyanki with an apron on. The apron has writing on it, which says “Kiss the Cook”, and has an image of mistletoe at the waistband. Weird. The cook is screaming at the cauldron for some reason. Popular culture would imply that this is the normal state for cooks, but that can’t be true all the time - restaurants would be much noisier.

Rusty opens discussions by asking if the cook really wants us to kiss them. The cook ignores this opening salvo and keeps screaming at the food. Two other githyanki wearing toque’s approach. Then she startles at the voices in her head, and spins to look at the party. He draws his silver greatsword, but then puts it away again when it is apparent the people approaching aren’t a) Illithids; or b) screaming and attacking. This appears to disappoint him.

The he does a double take and points at Horus. “You! Rabbit! I know you possess the knowledge of Time! I have seen your commemorative statues in Tu’narath. Halt and assist me, or I shall be forced to lodge a formal complaint with the Primordial of Time, Chronos.” We all look at Horus and wonder if he is beholden to more Eldritch entities that the one we knew about. Horus does not elaborate. All right Rabbit, keep your secrets.

The Githyanki chef - K’vath - is angry that he cannot create brioche. Brioche is a light and fluffy french bread roll, heavy on the butter, that goes well with cream, jam or fruit. It does not come from sourdough starter. As the name suggests, Sourdough bread comes from Sourdough starter. Sourdough bread is a heavy, crusty bread that goes well with soups. You’re welcome, Ethan.

Anyway, the lack of time and gravity is playing merry hell with K’vath’s attempts to cook. Heat, he can manage, but everything burns on the outside and is raw in the middle because heat does not conduct in the absence of time. Yeast does not grow, so bread does not rise. You get the idea. You would have though the Githyanki - who have lived on the Astral plane forever - would have figured this out by now.

Rusty and Horus put their heads together and figure out a solution in a few minutes, and actually fabricate a “Micro-wave” in about 20 minutes. Rusty tries to explain the devices operation to K’vath but K’vath is pretty stupid, and Rusty is incapable of dumbing it down enough. Horus gets sufficiently frustrated with K’vath’s obtuseness that he snaps and yells the idiot instructions at him. This goes down unexpectedly well - the Githyanki apparently respect straight talk. I think Ethan modeled them off Klingons. The name style certainly fits.

Anyway, the Micro-wave works perfectly, and we all get some Brioche bread to eat which gives us 1d8 HP permanently. Rusty, after all that work, rolls a 1. Typical. We also get K’vath’s silver greatsword, which is a +3 silver Greatsword. It is unclear what effect it has on silver cords - Ethan’s world-building is in flux on that front. Lastly, we get a rock. Nice! It’s a special rock that we can present to any Githyanki that we are having trouble with, and they will know we are friends of the Githyanki. You’d think that - given that there are freaking statues celebrating Horus’s victory over the Illithid in Tu-narath, that the Githyanki would all be pretty well disposed towards us. It is obvious that this will not be the case, given that we were given this smoking Checkov’s gun.

Fucking Bhaal

Louie finally gets a look upstairs and finds a creepy stalker shrine to tracking his every move. They have a bunch of crystal balls holding images of parts of his life. Louie wanders memory lane a bit. Finally, he finds out where these scrying balls came from - a man gave them to Kristin shortly after she arrived on the Astral, saying that he had worked out a way for Louie to keep one of his mothers. Ominous.

Louie goes back downstairs to watch Kristen die, stabbed in the back with a black blade. Franscesca screams. Kristen’s soul shatters and dissipates, revealing Bhaal behind her. He’s a bit pissed after we fucked him over and killed all his minions. He wants (for reasons, but who cares) Louie to hold on to these dice, and cast Banishment on him again. Louie does so. Bhaal is a dick right to the end, and we can assume that banishing him in this way has sent him to wherever Jergal is.

Given that it was probably Jergal that gave the memory crystals to Louie’s mothers in the first place, it is likely he has had this planned out for decades. Bhaal’s probably fucked now.

By the way, Franscesca’s scream was the scream Dennis heard - he comes in right after. We head out after a while - everyone comes.

Pretty Dreadnaught

Louie, Dennis, Francesca and Seldrid find an Astral Dreadnaught crying. It is a girl Astral Dreadnaught, though I’m not sure how even other Dreadnaughts are supposed to be able to tell. She is very sad, because she has eaten one too many mortals who read one too many crappy romance books. Apparently, Astral Dreadnaughts get the memories of people they eat. That’s worth remembering.

She’s sad because she thinks she is ugly, and wants to be beautiful. The party is sympathetic, and offer to give her Louie’s feather boa of disguise. We put it on her, and teach her to use it, but it doesn’t work for reasons unknown.

She directs us to the Soul Market, and we all head there in the hope of figuring out this conundrum.

A library of our own

Rusty, Horus and Lil’ Louie find a Grandfather Clock. Horus manages to open it, and inside is a extra-dimensional space containing a library. These are the contents:

1. 1. An answer to a question they may have.
2. A skill proficiency
3. A +1 to a skill proficiency
4. A Feat
5. A Spell
6. A Cantrip
7. A Book written by Horus from the future that grants them an extra class feature.
8. How to become a Lich
9. Book of Vile Darkness

We get to take some of them, but it’s not clear how many. To be decided later.

The Soul Market

Louie, Dennis, Francesca and Seldrid reach the market, riding on Zaestra the Astral Dreadnaught. There is a single hag in the center of an otherwise deserted shopping district. She is surrounded by small, glowing soul bags, presumably containing souls. She’s lonely and upset. Apparently her sisters have moved to the Prime Material plane. She declined to go, something she is regretting now. The Soul Market, once a thriving shopping destination, is now just her - and that shadowy guy over there that she heavily hinted we should talk to. We really did not want to, but eventually the heavy handed hints got too much and we wandered over.

The shadowy figure is Asmodeus, and he offers to bring Louie’s mother back to life. Suspicious, we decline for now. He gives us a card that will allow us to call on him in the future.

Finally we figure out why the feather boa is not working for Zaestra. It’s because Ethan has a fundamental misunderstanding of what spell components are, and also how magic items work. Once that was cleared up, it works fine, and Zaestra is overjoyed with her new Marith appearance. She’s a goddamn massive Marith, but that’s OK - at least she’s sexy now.

Zaestra gives us a crystallized tear that we can use to summon her.