More Strangers on More Ships in More Whirlpools
After leaving The Beast, our group went around the strange city that we landed in, and tried to find a way back to our respective homeworlds. After a few days of searching we found a shady merchant who offered us a couple of "Focusing Crystals", claiming that if we hold one tightly and think of home when jumping into a rift, we would be sent back to our homeworld.
We weren't.
We jumped into the portal and I saw the others vanish one by one into the ether, until only Ascii and I remained. We fell through the vortex and I landed in a whirlpool. Again.
I managed to climb onto a large crate and from there onto the deck of a nearby longship. The ship had a tall mast and two rows of oars, but it was entirely unmanned, and there was a suspicious-looking pile of copper arms and armour bearing a dragon insignia.
By the time I managed to get my bearings a few others landed on the ship:
First was a blue skinned humanoid called Sozolan who called herself a "Vedalken" or something like that. She seemed to be a sort of Enchanter and/or Sorceress, and claimed to have worked on creatures like Ascii in the past, which is interesting. Then there was Kali, a humanoid with fiery hair and red skin. She said that one of her parents was an Elemental while the other was a sort of elf, but she didn't really elaborate much on what she is herself. I can relate to that. Third was Paris - a human who wore thin rags and apparently came from a world without magic, and he thought that he was in some afterlife. Finally, Paris pulled Ascii onto the ship. We should really make something to help Ascii swim.
We did some quick introduction while Paris put on a suit of armour from the pile, and then we noticed that the ship was headed down the whirlpool, and in its center we could see an island far below. While contemplating our options I went through my bags. I found a few items that weren't there before, but I realized that I intuitively knew what they all did - maybe my Artifacts were adjusting to the way Essence works in this world? Anyway, I found a bag with five small charms, each comprised of a tiny pearlescent bead and a feather fashioned out of metal leaf, and I somehow knew that they were safe-falling charms. I gave one charm to each of my companions, and once the ship fell through the whirlpool and entered a free fall, I activated them and we soared safely to the ground.
The Beach
We landed on a beach, and the ship crashed noisily into a large rocky bluff. As we were making sure that everyone was fine, we heard a large creaking noise, and the ship started to move. It was pushed away from the rocks and into the water, and a gigantic humanoid came out from a cavern in the rocks - it was at least eight meters tall, and had a single, huge eye in the center of its forehead (Paris later said that the creature is called a Cyclops). The cyclops was, understandably, mad at us for crashing a ship into its body, and it seemed pretty injured, though its wound started recovering incredibly quickly right before us. It yelled at us and said something about eating us. Ascii tried to calm it down, and it responded by tearing off the ship's mast and swinging it towards him.
Paris ran forward and blocked the giant mast with his shield, then attacked the giant cyclops with his spear. I pulled out my Blasting Wand and took a quick shot at it, and surprisingly it seemed to work fine. It was actually impressively effective, and didn't seem to drain any of the wand's energy. Maybe this world has a higher level of ambient Essence, making magic much more abundant, and making Artifacts more efficient? My blast was followed by Sozolan casting a spell that made Paris grow to huge proportions (though not nearly as big as the cyclops), and then Kali shot some fiery magical bolts at the giant.
The giant responded to all of this by stepping over Ascii, almost crushing him in the process, then taking a wide swing at us. He hit all of us except for Kali, and came within an inch of killing Ascii, Sozolan, and me.
I took out a Blasting Stone from my pouch and threw it at the giants head, and strangely, it exploded into a huge fiery explosion. The explosion was far larger, which can probably be explained by the higher levels of ambient Essence, but I'm not sure why the explosion was fiery - usually it's a purely concussive force. Anyway the explosion was quickly followed by Kali shooting a huge bout of flames at the giant's head and Sozolan shooting a bolt of acid at it, making the giant collapse to the ground, burnt and wounded.
We regrouped and tried to understand what we could do from there. Sozolan healed us all a small amount, and Ascii was able to heal me somewhat (which he mentioned that he wasn't able to do that before), then I offered Sozolan a helping of Ambrosia to help heal her wounds. Ascii didn't allow her to eat it for fear of it exploding again, so I took the risk and ate it myself. It really was weaker than the Ambrosia back at home, but at least it didn't blow up in my mouth.
As we tried to understand what we want to do, I noticed the cyclops beginning to move, mostly healed from its wounds. I called out to everyone to warn them and was about to shoot a bolt from my wand, when a DRAGON appeared out of nowhere and knocked the giant down. The dragon bit and clawed at the giant, and the giant retaliated with a massive swing from the ship's mast, almost tearing off one of the dragon's wings.
The dragon threw a spear to the ground and told us that it's the only way to kill the giant. Paris ran forward and took the spear, plunging it into the giant's body, and it finally died. Kali blew up the corpse for good measure.
The DRAGON!!!
With the cyclops dead, the dragon turned to us. She introduced herself as Arkyrania, and said that she was part of the Order of the Dragon, which is apparently the same organization that Dhovos works for! I didn't know that dragons even worked in organizations alongside mortals, which was a bit of a shock, but apparently in this world it's perfectly normal.
Arkyrania asked us if we're the "reinforcement team", which we clearly are not, but we ended up being. It's the engineering crew all over again.
She led us to an army camp, where a few grunts (their words, not mine), gave us food and drink. We sat there for about an hour, resting and talking. I helped Ascii see Kali and Sozolan as humans, and got some more insight into what he actually is. From what I gather, he has some sort of moral code with a few strict rules, and if he breaks any of the rules then he can't use his powers any more. The rules are something like "I can't harm humans", "I will do what humans command", and "I will protect myself". I'm not sure yet what sort of deity or spirit is keeping him beholden to those rules, but it sure seems to looooove humans.
We then pivoted to talking about my heritage, and I once again had to explain that I am not a cat. My mother is human, my father is a Felid, and neither of them did anything intimate with actual cats.
Kali said that she comes from a world where everything is fire and magma, which honestly sounds awful. Ascii then tried to explain that the sun is a huge ball of fire with something called "Helium", which sounded kinda strange. I thought everyone knew that the sun is actually a distant gateway to the Realm of Light...
The DRAGON RIDERS???
After we were rested and fed, we climbed up the hill to the commanders' camp - this was a small circle of tents with only a couple of humans. We met a few of their leaders, and they explained to us the situation:
In this world, dragons form bonds with humans, and the human can then ride the dragon into battle. The dragons and humans are at war against the giants. There's a species of giants that have six arms who, and a subspecies of those giants that have six fingers on each of their six arms who are super intelligent and powerful magic users. The leader of the giants' army is called Krakos, and he is currently staying in a small outpost guarded by magical ballistae that can KILL DRAGONS. These ballistae are protected by a magical force field created by Krakos. Krakos also created the whirlpool vortex portal that we came through, probably in an attempt to destroy the dragon/human army.
Basically we were told that our best shot at getting out of this horrid world is to get to Krakos and either make him create a portal to get us out of here, or somehow steal the knowledge of how to create those vortexes.
From a fortress with weapons that can KILL. DRAGONS.
Oh and we learnt that Arkyrania, the dragon, can also skinchange into a human called Kyrah. Because this world wasn't strange enough.
The Plan
So we came up with a plan, and I almost feel ashamed that I contributed so much to this horrible idea.
We're going to set up a diversion by making a hollow wooden statue, and setting it in front of the front gate. The statue is going to be filled with two booby traps: it's going to be loaded with explosive dragon excrement, which should explode if the giants see through our ruse and try to burn it down. If they for some reason accept the gift and go near it, we're going to install a mechanism that will drop one bag with a Spatial Pocket enchantment into another, and that should create a huge explosion or multidimensional rift or something similarly destructive.
While that's going on in the front gate, we're going to get on a boat and sail around the back of the outpost. I'm going to use some magic to let us breathe underwater, and then the five of us (plus a skinchanged Kyrah) are going to walk underwater up to the back of the outpost (hopefully avoid any and all Krakens), find a back gate (that may or may not exist), find one of the ballistae (somehow), take out its operator (without raising an alarm), hope that Ascii can figure out how to fire the weapon (and use it to harm a humanoid giant), then use it to take out the other ballistae (without dying), and finally fight Krakos, who may or may not be able to blow us up with a single spell.
At least we have a dragon on our side.
In a world where dragons seem to be more fragile than humans???