Day 365 - One year
Day 401 - Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Day 480 - Landing on Bral
Day 481
Day 485 - Dinner with the richest bishop
Day 487 - Pastries
Day 489 - Quick trip to Oerth
Day 491 - Kobold baby-snatchers
Day 499
Day 501 - Space Giant
One year has passed since I won the Royal Flush in a poker game. Since then my crew and I have battled a genie, killed a dragon, rescued a princess, discovered a world-shatteringly powerful pearl, freed slaves, rescued a mage, traveled to distant planets and even other spheres, and been attacked by ships full of pirates, lizardmen, berserkers, and skeletons.
Other than the two weeks we spent on Solune we've been in space for over 200 days strait. All this space travel is wearing on my nerves. I'm going to try to avoid any more trips between spheres for a while unless they are absolutely necessary. As for tonight, I think I'll get good and drunk in honor of the ship's anniversary.
Strange things are happening today, but never mind that for now. I can cast spells! Zeke was nearly as happy as I was that I learned to cast. All those years of study have finally paid off. On top of that the heavens have smiled down upon me and granted me divine spells of nature. I'm not really sure how this works. I'll have to find a place to settle down in nature once we're back on land and do some serious prayer.
Now back to the strange things. I find that waves of unreality sweep past us from time to time. You could swear things were one way and the next time you check they're different. Well today was one of those times in spades. Other than the spells I'd say the changes I have noticed are mostly minor. Two spells out of my spellbook completely disappeared. They simply don't exist anymore. Zeke remembers that they used to exist too. Weird. Then there's my armor. It's back to its former might. Actually you might say it's a little more impressive looking than it was when I was first given the suit by the church. Zeke tells me it's next to impossible to cast spells in full plate armor, though. I've decided to hang up the heavy armor for a while and try out the invisible chainmail shirt for a while. My Wand of Wonder has changed. I've gotten a few of the skills back that I lost to the undead Hierarchy agents, but I don't feel quite as confident in my mastery of the greatsword.
The rest of the crew is finding that they've changed in subtle ways too. Anna no longer needs her spellbook to learn spells. Liam is tougher. Zeke can cast more powerful spells. None of them have experienced this sort of thing before. They aren't used to having the world change around them like I am, but it all seems to have worked out for the best. For now.
We finally reached The Rock of Bral today. For the first time I am truly relieved to be off The Royal Flush. Even The Rock feels a little claustrophobic, but I can deal with that.
I met a few customers of The Skaver's Grin who had heard tale of my legendary pancake eating. I was overjoyed to give them some pointers and tell them a bit about our adventures. Many people here long for stories of action and daring, so I tend to leave out a lot of the boring parts (like 6 month in space).
Zeke received a letter from his mother, which had some interesting insights on the changes to reality. One of the more noticeable changes was in the value of cargo. Our cargo devalued over by over 6000gp, but strangely I seem to be able to sell goods at a higher profit margin now. Hopefully this will all balance out.
Liam and I took a trip to the magic store to see if we could get our hands on rings of protection. Just our luck the owner had sold out just that week. Evidently the elves made a run on them and cleaned him out. Weird. But we didn't leave empty handed. Liam bought a magical stick that can be made, supposedly, immovable at the push of a button, but the incredible effort I was able to move it ever so slightly. If I was just a little stronger... Never-the-less, Liam has himself one really nifty toy there. I bought a couple of spells - Bull Strength and True Strike. I can't cast Bull Strength yet, but maybe Zeke will cast it on me. True Strike on the other hand is right up my alley. It should really come in handy.
One little fireball and they drag you off to Jail! Yesterday I was showing Zeke the wonders of this super slick magic wand I've had for years, when out shoots a fireball. No big deal, right? Liam extinguished the bush - end of story, right? Wrongo! A bunch of city guards came to my tent today where I was happily selling goods and hauled me down to the local constabulary. Well, there was much arguing and outrage and disagreement, but in the end I was let off with a stiff 400gp fine. Jeeze, it's not like I burned down town hall or something. This is clearly one of those places with too many desk riding law makers with too much free time on their hands, and a city guard with not enough actual crime to attend to.
Tonight we attended a dinner at the home of Bishop Scilotti, head priest of Nephthas. This guy is seriously rich. His church has a solid gold altar that must weigh several tons. (Do you remember when a magic bag warned us to "Beware the priests of the Golden God."?) The meal was good, and we chatted with a wealthy merchant, Melon, and his companions Silvis and Gunny at our table.
Hey, did I mention Justicebringer now has cool illusionary flames? Well it does. It doesn't just give off light any more, now it looks like it's burning. It's pretty sweet.
Well, back to the bishop. He called us into his study after dinner to offer us 200,000 gold for the pearl we found on Ginsel. We politely declined the offer. Zeke didn't even want to hear the price, but I'm curious about what the pearl is worth. 200,000gp is probably low, but at least it gives us a notion about how power the thing is. Now if we could just figure out what it does!
I'm relieved he didn't say he'd pay us 1 million gold pieces. I'd been arguing with Mustafa's little cousin (nice kid) at length earlier today about the ludicrousness of the number 1 million. It has no practical application and it would have been just the icing on the cake if this rich bishop guy had tossed the number around.
The crew has been talking about wanting a bigger ship. I can't say that I blame them. Honest Lenny has offered us 60,000gp for our old minor spelljamming helm, which would completely pay for a new, bigger ship. After looking over plans we settled on a modified dolphin shaped ship. I could dock The Royal Flush right into this dolphin, which is pretty cool, but it also means we'd need to keep both helms, and now we're right back to square one - not being able to afford the new ship. But these things take time to draw up plans and build, so maybe we'll have that kind of cash in a few months when they're done building it. As it is Zeke signed some sort of magical binding contract about the designs and we paid an engineer 3000 gold as a deposit. I'd be happier if I had a copy of the contract Zeke signed. He doesn't seem to remember the details of it.
The question: Do tough sailor types want yummy pastries enough that they'll eat them in public?
The setup: 40 free pastries in a dive bar. Our party happily enjoying pastries. An invitation goes out to all to partake.
The result: Occupants of the bar reacted with apprehension and distrust. Pastries eaten by outsiders.
Conclusion: Perhaps the fear of tainted pastries overwhelmed the motives we were testing for. The subjects seemed to think they were being tricked. If this experiment is attempted again some element of trust will need to be added to gain the desired results.
The crew has come to the conclusion that it is time to chase the almighty gold coin. We've been hired to bring two trunks to Huffert, a remote village on Oerth. The delivery is only worth 1000gp, but we can also spend some time selling cargo on Oerth and stock up on goods to sell on Bral. The trip should be pretty short, so it looks like a smart financial move.
After this trip I'd like to go to Ginsel.
We delivered the trunks to Lem Holquist , an alchemist who relocated to Oerth from Bral. The trunks contained glassware. Lem was glad to see the stuff. He invited us to stay the night at his estate.
That night we all had dreams of little dog creatures and sure enough kobolds attacked the town and swiped a baby. Never fear � heroes are on the scene. We armed up a little and set out to find the missing baby. When I say we armed up a little I mean that we didn't strap on the serious hard-core gear. After all we were just going to fight some kobolds, right? So I left the big armor on the ship and got to work.
I tracked the kobolds to their lair. Man, am I rusty at tracking! Luckily these evil runts aren't exactly masters of stealth, so I doubt that the crew noticed that I wasn't exactly doing a top notch job of hunting them down. The kobold lair was a big mound, but I think it was originally a man-made crypt. We were met at the entrance by a pair of gargoyles. They ripped me up pretty good, but the crew and I were able to destroy the granite guardians. Liam warmed up some healing and soon we were all good as new. The first hall contained five childishly simple traps which we easily avoided before the real battle began. The kobolds used ambush tactics to try to fend us off, but it was no use. They were just too wimpy. You could take one out with just a kick. The kobolds made a stand in their dining hall. (I wonder what the room was when the place was a crypt.) Zeke tossed a lighting bolt into the room to soften them up, and we mopped up the rest of �em. Their leader teleported away. Not a bad trick for a kobold! We found some treasure, but no baby, so we pressed on.
Down another hallway we found a mysterious door of darkness. When I stood at the threshold my mind clenched up and these eyeless gray guys poured out of the darkness. The crew pounded these guys good while I was consumed by some sort of stunning magic. Anna tried to get into the room, but she too fell victim of the stun. Being stunned isn't so bad really. After about a minute you snap out of it. So instead of trying to think my way around this strange stunning darkness door I just grit my teeth and tried to shrug off the magic. Sure enough, the boneheaded brute force method did the trick. I charged into the room and soon the rest of the crew followed. There were a few more of those eyeless guys and a mind flayer to fight, but they proved no match for our might. The mind flayer teleported away, but it didn't take the baby. Do you know what the mind flayer had been doing? Eating the brains of the kobolds! Ha ha! What could be less satisfying? No wonder the mind flayer wanted a better meal. Anna and Zeke wanted to kill the mind flayer, which was a fine idea, but I pointed out that we had no way to find it. We searched the mound, but there was no trace of the monster, so we went back and returned the baby. Mission accomplished.
Today we're loading up to head back to The Rock of Bral.
We appraised the loot from the kobold mound. There might have been close to 10,000gp worth of treasure overall. Not too shabby! We've also spent about a week in Greyhawk selling goods from Bral and loading up with new cargo. At this rate we shouldn't have any trouble affording the dolphin ship.
I've never heard of such a thing, but today we ran into a 300 foot tall space giant! This guy had plants growing on his back. He also had some kind of space-tentacle-monster eggs growing on his back, and they hurt. So we landed the ship ON him and went to check it out. There were about two dozen eggs and each one had a nasty tentacle with a poison stinger. Zeke cast two really sweet spells on me. One made me grow to 9 feet tall and the other made me much stronger. I used the Blade of Justice in one hand and a longsword in the other hand. It was great, but it was also a bit of overkill. The eggs were barely any tougher than kobolds. These spells would be better used against a small number of something more fearsome. We killed all the eggs and Liam healed the spot where the eggs had dug into the giant's back.
As thanks for our help the giant gave us a small chest full of platinum. Wow! Also in the chest was a healing potion (Liam says he thinks he has figured out how to brew these things up himself), a scroll, and a magic ring.
We'll be landing on Bral soon, looking for more ways to earn cash for the new ship.