Jack seeing that the press of attack was the wrong course of action continues into a second round of creating distance between himself  and the others he is battling, the chronocharm of the horizon Walker helps him to move away even more swiftly than is humanly possible, being  low on spells to even channel he switches to the longbow, though not magical in nature, it is masterly crafted....

He fires off an arrow at the encroaching dangers....

12:56, Today: Jack Springhill rolled 6 using 1d8+2.  damage.

12:55, Today: Jack Springhill rolled 8 using 1d20+7.  confirm critical. no critical

12:55, Today: Jack Springhill rolled 22 using 1d20+7.  Bow attack.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:57, Thu 28 Mar.

Aranea tries to cover Jack's regrouping. She will launch web at an enemy she can't reach. Assuming there are targets she doesn't have to chase down she can make 6 claw and a single bite attack each turn.

Aranea rolled 22,15,14,23,21,11,10,8 using d20+9,d20+7,d20+7,d20+7,d20+7,d20+7,d20+7,d20+7.  +9 is bite, last +7 is possible web.

The song of the fire giants echoes in the ears of the lich as it deigns to fire off the last little bit of life force it has. Do recall, that if its phylactery is not brought to a pround, a type of magic item dealer similar to a blacksmith, then there are consequences. Generally prounds will submerge the phylactery in acid to force the lich into dissolution and the singular Highwall pround that you recall reading from your time spent at the library yields a certain amount of satisfaction that the lich will not respawn, this time in the tower. "If you bring the tower down, they will emerge from their graves." Such spoke one of the thin lines of memory that bandy about in your mind prior to feeling the last little bit of chills from the cloaked dweller. His frosted main fades into the abyss as he blasts at you, before his skull clangs with the guisarme, bending inward like plates of copper finding a field vacant but for the sun peeking out from behind the tower. With this image is the execution of the ranged Fell. Both he and the lich seem to dissolve into nothing, the Fell being eviscerated by Aranea. The swirling clouds of astirax seem to dhriek as they become denatured and even blot out the sun for a moment before returning the landscape to its stillness.

The enemies vanquished (and the arrow now chopped and broken before Aranea), the clouds roil in formation as though begging you to heal up the wounds of this Eredane. Perhaps there is a watercraft up ahead that will permit you to cast off towards more sundry and bleak shores. Certain alignments of creatures say that there is a cursedness to the lake shared by those whose fingers skim its waters. Ultimately the water will mark you as a target for crucibles beyond your reckoning, tattoos from sources unclean.

The yellow grass bends a bit in the wind before winnowing from some kind of sky horse soothes its seething. Phylactery upon the ground, the enemies you thought might be in the tower hadn't demonstrated for sure their presence.

"Frost Tangle" fails against you, Jack, and even with a critical when he attempts to bring the power back around like a boomerang. Aranea's target's arrow gets ripped to shreds when she dives towards him, ensnaring his corpse in webbing now red. His low roll means he just fired it off.

Jack seeing the foe vanquished, and some need for speed to get into a better position out of the badlands and not in the depths of the waterways either...

He uses his senses to gather information quickly.....Quick reconoiter feat

21 using 1d20+15.  spot check. / 20 using 1d20+13.  listen

......and then searches for the phylactery so the life force may be sedated or forced away from the material plane for a long term....

"Aranea, we should leave this place of chaos swiftly."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:48, Wed 10 Apr.

She began gathering her silk threads to her, "There is something to be said for threads pulled tight and skein woven closer to chaos. Indeed these will likely be among the best to enchant though I would like to consider all my works worthy of such... Not as good as my big sisters' though.

Let us move on... Are you injured? I keep some healing potions on me and maybe I can find good reagents for alchemy out here..."

"You are correct of course, the mitheral links of my chain is muffled by the finest silk, making it even more silent than mitheral is usually.  Soon I intend to enchant it to make mistmitheral."

Jack grabs the phelactery and readies to move to a safer location...

Aranea nodded, though it would be clear that she didn't understand something of what the other adventurer was saying, "We should dispose of that sooner than later, I don't want a crazed dead mage forming from shadows when we are resting or trying to use stealth to get around key opponent positioning," she seemed to soften and shrink in her robe as she returned to human form. She could only change once more before getting significant rest. She clicked her tongue and wishes a little wistfully, "I wish I were more grown up before I had to leave home."

"You are speaking rightly, I do not understand this land very well and it seems like things are known to me in some unaware ways, and the path forward becomes clearer, though I am disoriented to this place I have come to.  Let us return to the town and deal with the heart of the monster."


Exit the badlands swiftly.....

Jack's successful (and you're good at searching and spotting) search leaves afterimages on your eyes with a twinkling of the water sending chills up your spine, the water seeming almost red to you, Jack, but when you look closer you can see images overlapping with the turtles on the shore, and you expect there to be eggs of some magical nature. Also, somebody carved something onto one of the foundation posts of the tower and you suspect that it's some kind of murder count, with the general notion of a brute race vying with both internal and external pressures for domination. With your level of fatigue you can only suspect that the warmth you feel from the sun is as ephemeral as the energies suffusing the lich and his cadre. Change for the better seems to sweep over you as a warm wind, encouraging you to find a way over the waters in which time you won't have to wait for a ferryman. Listening carefully, you become attuned to the bell-like chiming that floats over the waters, but you're not sure how far away or if it's even real. Ruptures in the cosmos always end up with light and sound-related hallucinations, especially once you're thirsty enough on the road.

You can hear a faint scratching in the tower, and your position when you listen puts you straight below it. The wind and the wood make a unique sound that seems like an enchantress elf is making love to a halfling and perhaps it was a different place back then, but the lake (sea, maybe) has other practitioners. Maybe the voices of wind and water sing of the fallen lich turned to ash, which keeps the bending blades and stalks on their tippy-toes. You estimate based on your directional skills (assuming you all have good ones) that the maps you selected from Skie's point you south, while the sun over the water seems west (needless to say).

The gods seem to be unreachable and Izrador's voice inside your mind is sapped out with a guzzle of water, just the same as poison ebbs from a wound. The barricades that you sense made up the senseless perception of space leaves you tumbling mentally, with clouds drifting lazily overhead.

Somehow Jack found some interesting things, and a place near the water, his counsciousness seems to swim as if he himself is falling into some sort of unknown slumber from which he is struggling not to fully succumb to the lure of the ethereal music some cosmic lullaby played by Thanos himself.

Jack struggles over and over to not fall into whatever sirens call is attempting to overtake his facilities, will it be that he again awaken in a new world even stranger than this one.....

"Aranea?"
He croaks weakly

The lullaby passes as dulcet tones are wont to do, with a certified flash of images indicating the gods. You vaguely recall getting a free ride from a gondolier gnome. As you begin to awake further, he plys you with questions.

"Where would you like to go? Chances are good we'll run into some patrols but I had heard through the wind that 'the tower' was in full aspect, and so I found you."

He propels the boat further with just a slightly glowing paddle. The sun is setting and you can recall, based on the patterns on the water, that your dream began with sloshing water around your boots.

"The highwall pround so that the lich doest not respawn, good ferryman."

Before he falls into a fistful slumber, he asks
"DId you get my spider lady friend or did she wash out?"

Aranea prodded the ranger with a foot as she sleepily muttered, "I'm still working on the knots Patrice. Some people only have to wear a blindfold..." then she sits upright and clicks her teeth, "Oh, where are we now?!"

She physically drew back into herself but relaxed a bit with a sigh as she realized her transformations may only be a few in number each day but they were still of excellent duration and didn't require her to remain awake anymore.

Jack takes in the sky lights above the swirls of energy, reflected in the surface of the lake below...

"Highwall to destroy the lich for good.  I do not share the burden of your knots, perhaps it is something I can help with..."

"Are the knots the tangles of light in the sky?"

He wonders who Patrice was in the background but is not curious enough to ask, perhaps another man she has known maybe we all look the same...

Aranea let out a puff of air before clarifying, "There was a time where my sister wove a robe of comfort and allure for a gorgon. The customer's petrifying gaze is particularly a problem for spiders who have little choice but to look all around. We have adapted somewhat, being more than spiders, but still...

Patrice was in her human shape and I was in the middle so that I could lay my early silk and still have hands to work with. I was dreaming about it. I had to wear a hood to be safe if the gorgon was in the room. Every female wants to be both comfortable and pretty... and alive.."

Jack enjoys the boat ride the time of lethargy passing away from him as the boat rocks gently to and fro.

Jack looks back and smiles at Aranea
"You are a pretty girl."
Right now I am imagining her as a jumping spider as they seem the friendliest sort of spider...

Not sure what to do with the statement she turned her head clockwise with her nose as the axial point. She often felt her spider fur was luxurious to touch... but to have her humanoid form praised was... unprecedented. "Ah... Thank you... I'm sure that for a... human? You are rather attractive yourself."

Then again, she had little to do with other races before leaving the home nest. An adult would have been less prone to such things and stayed in her home forest.

Jack looks back to the sky....

"I am not sure how much ones form should be used to define something as fantastic as the self, though many limit themselves in definition to the limitation of statements of what they are not, a poor way to define anything...better to define my self in the affirmation of I am."

"Greenham's my name." The Ferryman engages you with a raise of the eyebrows. He lifts up a golden gleaming object which even outstrips the sun in its fervor. The curves of it seem to make time stop and your fugues ever-more interesting and feel-good. Aranea can see some kind of web-like nature to it and Jack recalls the metals in which his blade was forged, opining that there must be some kind of ore that would permit you to shore up a small area, made of the self-same ore in the object. The object is a sextant and they're pretty rare. They're worth 500 gp in Highwall and Baden's Bluff, or approximately. Elves taking to the sea are pretty common and they are able to find replacement leisure within their demenses, worried more about who is coming and going than manufacturing at the ever-rare forges. It weighs 5 pounds and the Ferryman hoists it with aplomb: "Shows me where to go." He brings the mechanism back around, and hitting the light seems to awaken some kind of eye on the water from which emerges Mongo. The hundred-handers of yore seem to give him a boost into the sky and the Ferryman (whose name you figured out was Ferris) spins the device a little an it appears like a spinner. (Sextant, p. 159-60, Goods and Gear +6 checks to Profession (navigator) checks). He proffers it to Jack: "Bring your friend in, he was much anticipated." The mirrors are demonstrably good for the glass furnaces of the palace of Izrador.

The Ferryman drones on: "I can get you to the shores of the south in no time, but it means you will need to provide for me a shard of Poseidon. I can wait here in the sea to have it delivered or I can find you later, your own choice. But gnomes around here are always looking for ways to avoid capture, so our meeting will have to be fleeting." His skin seems to bend with the refraction of the light. Mongo is incarnated upon the ship by the dreams of Jack and Aranea. "Know that your friend's soul will ever be stored in this sextant, so that his image will be with you though not his body." He hefts a plank that he seems to treat with some deference. (Woodcarver, 56sp/month). Would you like for me to try for the wooden sextant? It can be cast in the same light as the metal ones, and I can show you back to the river El to carry you to the next destination. He has a salt-and-pepper goatee with a mop of black hair and unsteady footing despite being a seagoer. The mission now is to start shoring up regions that you might improve the lives of some of the dignitaries throughout the villages.

Group can determine whether to bring the Ferryman with you after his having gifted you a sextant.

Jack listens intently to the words of the ferryman and the demonstration of the sextant, taking it when offered, he attempts to repeat the process that had revealed a giant moments before and brought him from the incarnation of dreams, a dream within a dream, what is that Jack wonders to himself, thinking it is like going back and incepting an idea into someone else and it coming to pass because it had to do so.....

"Thank you for the instrument of navigation, now I just need to obtain the skills of a proper navigator."


The man had mentioned a god and a shard dealing with the water, a being called po seye den, a being named po whos' eye is in the water or den where he lives.....what a shared might be he does not know so he asks....

"What is a shared of Poseidon and how might we provide one to you?"

Aranea supplies a nod of greeting as she works to ensure the new fellow on the boat doesn’t destabilize the small craft. “Stranger, welcome! It would seem you are a gift from the waters themselves. What would you that we should call you by? I am Aranea.”

The goliath grunts "Name is Mongo. Mongo feels strange. Is Mongo still drunk? What did they put in that dwarven wine? They said made from crushed diamonds for diamond juice but that seems wrong. Not crunchy enough."

Jack was looking at the sextant, and imitating what the ferryman had done, when he noted a sudden sinking in the boat, and turns around just in time to see the arrival of a very large gentleman....

Whom Aranea spoke to....
"Greetings Mongo, I am Jack, I have just recently come to this world as well, the main town is called Cauldron, and is set within an old volcano....I do not understand this world very well as of yet."

"Hello Jack. Cauldron, huh? Placed inside a dormant volcano? Weird, but I've seen weirder. Giant hamsters on a treadmill powering a gnomish vehicle, now that's weird. Why is Mongo here?" the large warrior asks. He is wearing a metal breastplate armor that he moves around in as if it were made of cloth, and carries several oversized weapons, the worst of which is a massive 60 lb hammer.

"Sorry lad, I do not even know why I am here, or how I came to be here, or even really where here is.   For a while we were battling things and I thought perhaps I was in some sort of afterlife, or purgatory limbo, but decided that was a bad series of thought experiments to go on, so I have been gathering knowledge and trying to understand this place better, before seeking a way home."