Present Party: Aria, Claudia, Emori, Harmony, and Steve. Harmony is a new character that has joined the party. Claudia's player arrived late to the session.
Setting: Aboard the starship, Cave of Wonders, captained by a space pirate / genie, Theron, and his crew. Briefly, the System Space.
Plenty of transmigrators go through a world, trying to collect a Shard. Plenty of them succeed, but mortal beings are also fallible... and so many of them also fail.
Those who are mostly successful never know what happens to those who fail, and those who fail... they want nothing more than to forget.
Harmony knew what happened to those who failed. She sat, cowering in the System Space for an indeterminate amount of time. There was no way to tell how much time had really passed. There was... only the endless expanse of white space.
Until she felt a gentle tap on her back and heard the friendly voice of the Moderator. They told her that she was finished, and that she was going to go on her next job with another group, given that her last group had failed. She accepted, eager to leave this wretched place.
~~~~~
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| Confidence Milton Tiefling, Bard Iteration Age 20 in World 9 (Art made by me, using Heroforge) |
She took a few minutes to explore the major places in the ship, to see if the lamp really was in plain sight. With an 18 Investigation check, she still wasn't able to find anything out of the ordinary. Steve had even told her what he believed the lamp looked like from the vision he'd received at the start of the world: it was a small silver cube that glowed with a white light. Emori asked how everything was going, and Steve and Aria confessed that Confidence had been stabbed by Claudia. Naturally, she rushed to his room to help him and cast Cure Wounds.
When they looked again into the other part of the room, however, where Claudia had been, another tiefling was in her place. This one was a rosy pink instead of lavender, with similarly fluorescent pink hair, and she wore quite a few golden bangles. She introduced herself as Harmony, and the party figured out that she'd been transferred by "the ball of light upstairs."
After gauging the situation, Harmony convinced Confidence to take a seat on the bed, and she claimed she was going to cast a spell to help everyone calm down, and asked that he give into it. He believed her, and ended up willingly failing a save against Modify Memory. Harmony convinced Confidence that the two of them were best friends, and that he wanted to tell her and her friends everything about what he knew of the lamp. With some questions from the others to egg him on, they found out that Confidence had hid the lamp on the top shelf of the bar, behind several bottles. There were lights at the top of the shelves that would shine down on the glass bottles. Anything shiny behind it would just be attributed to the lights, and would be very hard to see. Emori was surprised she didn't see it when she first checked. Confidence, believing that Harmony was a friend of his and learning that she was a singer, asked if she would perform with him. He and some of the other musicians were playing later that day. She gleefully accepted, and Confidence said he'd meet her in the cockpit, at the stage across from the bar.
After that, Emori took Confidence to get breakfast. Steve decided to check on Terrowin and his progress with the stock market before heading to the bar. Aria took Harmony there immediately, and all of them began to discuss telepathically what their next move would be.
~~~~~
When Claudia disappeared, she found herself in an inky black void. She saw nothing. Something cold slithered up her back.
A voice, so deep and vastly inhuman, told her, "I heard you. Don't trust that thing."
And she reappeared, in the bar, looking at Aria talking to Harmony.
~~~~~
Claudia made no fuss about her return, and ordered a drink, getting newly acquainted with Harmony. They added her into their telepathic strategy meeting. Upon learning the lamp's location, Claudia attempted to find it behind the bar. Faintly, she could made out a shape of a cube behind some of the bottles. Based on the information they learned, they decided that retrieving Theron's cuffs might be the safer route, compared to retrieving the lamp first. They didn't know what would happen if they did retrieve the lamp, and they figured it might let loose an all-powerful genie.
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| Bardic Captain Theron Captain of Cave of Wonders Former Genie (Art made by me, using Heroforge) |
Theron looked at Harmony as Steve came up beside him. "She's quite good, isn't she? Is she with you?"
"Yes."
He sighed. "You know... I've been thinking. I am... so tired..." Theron looked at his cuffs. "She wants me to give you these... tell me, Steve, how do you feel about being a genie?"
"Honestly, I think I'd be okay with that."
"Would you? Do you know what that means?"
"Not really, but I think it'd be fun."
Theron chuckled. "Fun..." He turned to Steve and clapped his hands on his shoulders. "Alright then."
Then, he pulled them down quickly. Just as the Shards touched Steve's forearms, Claudia grabbed the lamp. The world froze.
Steve's arms grew ice cold where the Shards touched him. He exhaled, and he could see his own breath. In the very back of his mind, he heard screams - Theron's screams - echoing. His throat felt like it was closing and there was an immense pressure on his back and shoulders. He could feel power coursing through his veins - more power than he knew what to do with - but it felt like he was stuck... in an itty-bitty living space.
Claudia's fingers were also cold around the cube. In the back of her mind, very faintly, she heard the voice of her fiancée, Amera, and the delayed message finally coming through: "Okay. So proud of you! I love you too."
Claudia cried as the party's visions faded to white.
~~~~~
They found themselves back in the System Space. Claudia held one Shard, and Steve had the other two, one in each hand. The System, however, was not there to greet them.
Being back in the white void, Harmony started to panic. Claudia attempted to calm her, but to little avail. If anything, it only made Harmony more bitter.
Steve, expecting a tuning fork from Jorge in the last world, attempted to summon one now.
A woman's voice replied, "I see you are requesting a tuning fork."
A creature appeared before them. It was small, made of blue light, and vaguely shaped like a humanoid. It had no face or arms, but its legs were seated crossed over each other, and it "carried" a huge tome beside it.
She introduced herself as the System Administrator (or Admin, for short) and she seemed to know Steve's intention. She said that a tuning fork for a cast of Plane Shift would compromise the integrity of most worlds, and then asked if he still wanted one.
Steve said that he would, and requested for it to be attuned to the world they just left. Admin created him one, and then disappeared.
The System joined them not long after that and zipped to Steve to collect the Shards. Claudia kept her fist closed tightly around it though, and asked for a bottle of wine that would never run out. The System granted the bottle to her, and then collected her Shard.
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| Scarlett Reinstated Captain of Cave of Wonders (Art by kiikiibee on Tumblr) |
- The pirates gathered around the captain's chair. Scarlett, the ship's first mate, pushed through to the front. Theron was nowhere to be found.
- Cave of Wonders laid siege to the city of Agrabah. The city's forces were quickly defeated, and the party watched as the wall around the city came crumbling down.
- They saw an older Ali, wearing a golden crown. He held out his arms to his sister, Dahlia, and pulled her into a hug.
- Dahlia laughed, and they heard her say, "Prince Ali... perhaps being amorous is better than I thought."
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| Princess Dahlia, the Courageous (Art by Sarctic on Deviant Art |
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| Prince Ali, the Amorous Now, King Ali of Agrabah (Art by toherrys on Deviant Art) |
After that, the System informed them of a few key things that would happen during their next mission: "I am sending another transmigrator with you. She has been something of a problem in the past, but I believe she will be useful to you. I have sent twelve groups of transmigrators to retrieve this Shard, in this world. None of them have succeeded. Your group has a good track record. I expect a positive result. Your role in this world is simple: a group of adventurers."
As they were whisked away to their next world, their vision faded to black.
~~~~~
ART LINKS:
https://kiikiibee.tumblr.com/post/180196741082/commission-of-a-flirty-red-headed-rogue
https://www.deviantart.com/sarctic/art/Gwen-DeLancy-395324626
https://www.deviantart.com/toherrys/art/commish-Dmitri-700365428
~~~~~
Credit to @ijaymendell inspiring this awesome campaign!
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