AAR: The Flying Travarian

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Fortesque
Posts:55
Joined:Thu Mar 08, 2018 3:55 am
AAR: The Flying Travarian

Post by Fortesque » Sun Jun 10, 2018 5:24 pm

The Flying Travarian
Time: 2018-06-09@23:00 GMT
GM: Fortesque (Whyr'wyndyl)
Circle: 7
Difficulty: Hard (advertised Medium, upgrade reasons: only 3 characters, near-lethal combat)

Player Rewards:
Thane: 20,000legend, 2,550 silver 4 TIPs
Ceadda: 20,000legend, 2,550 silver 4 TIPs
Romari: 20,000legend, 2,550 silver 4 TIPs

Downtime Actions Available:
Romari: Alchemy 7 (Rank 3; Booster Potion, Kelia’s Antidote, Kelix's Poultice)
Romari: Map Making 8 (Rank 1)
Romari: Item History 15 (Rank 4)
Romari: Research 30 (Rank 8, 20 sp)
Researchers may spend 20/2 Silver for +3 Steps

Further Information:
The Flying Travarian ghostship exhibits teleportation magics.

ChrisDDickey
Posts:1011
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:02 pm

Re: AAR: The Flying Travarian

Post by ChrisDDickey » Mon Jun 11, 2018 12:25 am

In recent weeks the Airship port has been abuzz with rumors of sightings of an ancient and decrepit airship, seen to be maneuvering under full sail without any crew whatsoever manning the helm or rigging. I have been pouring over ancient records and believe I have identified the ghost ship as "The Flying Travarian", which never returned from it's last trading mission before the scourge.

It had not done anything overtly threatening, but each sighting produced much panic. Working with the Throlic Air-Navy, I believe we detected a pattern to the sightings, and predicted "The Flying Travarian" would next be seen above the Granite Keep the following afternoon.. The navy agreed to deliver a small force of adepts to the deck of the ghost ship and stand ready to pull us off again after our investigation were complete.

Due to the short notice, only Ceadda and Romari were able to join me aboard HMAS Impetus for the expedition. It was a cloudy day, so it was very sharp eyed of Romari to spot the white sails and grey hull of the ship against the background of the cloud it emerged from. The helmsman maneuvered us some 100 yards away, and Romari cast flight upon each of us. we were most of the way across, when out of the clouds flew a Wyvern, chasing 3 gargoyles! I knew that we likely had a tough fight or three ahead of us on the ship, so I saw no reason to get involved in the fight between the two groups of creatures, I called out that I was willing to bet 5 silver on the Wyvern winning, but otherwise prepared to continue on towards the ghost ship minding my own business.

But Ceadda, as I understand it, has always hankered to measure himself against a Wyvern, and flew straight up to it and stabbed it a few times. He managed to know it for a loop, but it regained control of it's flight and came back looking for blood a half a minute later. In the meantime, 3 other Wyverns appeared! one attacked Ceadda, and two attacked the Impetus. I flew over and did a Down Strike called shot to it's wing that sent it plummeting down to the ground, frantically trying to avoid a fatal crunch. Romari cast Rampage upon us, and from then on we did even more damage. We knocked the original Wyvern out, and while Ceadda went to handle the Gargoyles which were attacking Romari (I knew we should have waited until the Wyvern ate the Gargoyles before interfering), I flew back to the Impetus (after all, they were our ride home and I did not want the crew mad at us). I clipped the wing of one, while the crew slew the last. This one fell upon the Impetus's deck, so the ship got some good Wyvern hide out of the encounter.

In the meantime, Ceadda and Romari were in trouble. They handled the Gargoyles easily enough, but something was interfering with them. The first thing they knew of it, something had dispelled both of their flight spells. Fortunately they were both very close to the deck of the ship. Much worse, Ceadda was hit by a power that we all recognized as a Horrors Spike Growth. By the time I got to the ghost ship they had determined that there was a Crystal Entity in the bow, 4 decks down. Ceadda had started down below decks to investigate, but turned back when he encountered a ghostly ball 2 decks down with at least 6 spectral dancers. Romari believed that if we gathered upon the stern-castle we would be out of range of the CE. We briefly investigated the officers quarters on the inside of the stern castle, and found nothing but junk and ruin. Using Astral Sense, Romari identified that in addition to one Crystal Entity, there were 10 spectral dancers and 16 other things on board.

After one hour, and the use of my Garlan Stone and a booster potion, I was fine and ready to proceed. Ceadda however had taken several wounds from various things, and asked that we take a rest. We divided into three 4 hour watches and did so. In the middle of the first watch, the ship suddenly seemed to change location. It went from late afternoon to dawn, the stars were not familiar at all. The temperature was much warmer, and we were now flying above what seemed to be an endless jungle.

As our watches progressed, the ship frequently teleported to a new location. Sometimes after many hours, sometimes after just 5 minutes. During these many teleports, we never encountered any features distinctive enough to positively identify. To be honest, despite years now of travel, there are few landmarks I would be able to recognize from the air. The profiles of maybe 3 mountain ranges, and while I have never seen the Death's Sea, I understand it is impossible to mistake. In any case, we did not see anything we recognized. Romari had the middle watch, and he awoke us to report that he had spotted somebody on the bow,but we kept good cover and it seemed to wander away.

After 12 hours we set out to explore the ship. The Flying-Travarien was an old Therian built Man-of-War class galleon, converted to merchant use. In addition to the Stern-castile, there are 4 decks. The two upper decks were gun decks that have been converted to cargo holds and most of their gun-ports filled in. The deck under that was now passengers quarters, and the lowest deck was another hold, this mostly for supplies.We discussed who had talents that might upon Spectral Dancers. I had several talents that I felt might possibly work. I am particularly good at staring meaningfully into people eyes, though the meaning I usually ascribe to that look is "don't mess with me". Romari only had Haggle, and Ceadda had no way to deal with the Dancers other than to attempt to spear them.

We had already explored the officers quarters below the quarter-deck. I hoped and strongly urged that we keep as far to the stern of the ship as we could, in order to keep out of the range of the CE's powers.. I hoped that we could descend all the way to the lowest hold, then rush forward to confront the CE. This plan got agreement, but in the very first hold, we spotted the creature that Romari had seen upon deck again. I gave it a Steely Stare, so it could not attack me. I urged Ceadda and Romari to go on down to the next lower deck. Ceadda said that he did not like the idea of leaving it alive behind us. Romari did not have any spells with long enough range. My spear did not have nearly enough range. The horror construct was an archer, and was not going to come to us. I again urged the we just leave it alone and go down to the next deck. Again Ceadda said he did not want to leave it alone behind us, and not having any good options, and having rejected not charging it, decided that he had to charge it. Romari and I had to reluctantly follow.

It was a farce. We could not hit the thing. I suspect the horror was using some sort of foul power to curse our luck. The CE immediately leapt into action and did horrible things to us. One of the first things it did was cause Crystal Spikes to grow out of my arms, causing wounds and interfering with my blows. The pain was horrible. The thing did not do great damage to us. What it did do is keep us all occupied for an agonizingly long time while the horror messed with us again and again. Finally Romari managed to get an Astral Interference active that protected us somewhat from the horrors powers, and Ceadda and I finally managed to down the archer construct.

I wanted to rest for a minute so that I could use my Garlen Stone to clear one of my wounds, and then go back to our plan of going down by the stern. However in the seconds after the fight, it occurred to us that we were already in the bow of the ship, having been silly enough to having been lured up there. There was a ladder down to the next deck right next to us. It was possible (indeed likely - unless the horror had modified the ship to give it maze-like properties), that there would be an almost straight decent to the lowest hold. So after a very brief discussion we decided to cast caution to the wind and charge downward. I lead the charge and we rushed right past the deck where the Spectral Dancers were still engaged in their ghostly ball. We also rushed past the old passenger deck, where moving figures were sealed into cabins by walls of crystal.

We got to the lowest deck, and Ceadda shattered the Crystal Entity with one single massive flurry of blows. On the deck above, we heard the crystals encasing the passenger cabins all shatter, and I poked my head up the ladder just in time to see the last few of the occupants rushing up the ladders. They looked to be demiwraiths, or some of them looked like they were more than half-way to being made demi-wraiths. They all apparently rushed to one of the few open gunports and leapt from the ship. Assuming they could not fly we assume they all committed suicide, There was also no sign of the Spectral Dancers.

After a very brief look around below-decks, I went up to helm to see if the ship was crashing or not. Surprisingly, it was not. I tried to take control of the helm, but it was utterly unresponsive. The ship was still teleporting at seemingly random intervals, indeed the frequency seems to have increased greatly. At one point we teleported inside a Citidal! We could see the dome of True Air and True Fire above us and on all sides! I was trying to figure out which citidal it was, and had just worked out that it was far, far to small to be Thera itself, when I recognized a distinctive building in Ipos of all Places! A small squadron of guard ships approached and attacked us. I was wanting to haul down our flag to show that we were surrendering, but unfortunately we were not flying any flags for me to haul down. I was about to go into the captains cabin to look for a flag I could haul up, so that I could haul it down as a symbol of surrender, when we teleported back out. Let me just address how weird all this was, by saying that horror tainted airships are not supposed to be able to teleport into citadels. The whole POINT of citadels is that they are made to be places that horrors may not teleport into or out of. There was ether something very wrong with the citidal of Ipos, or something very, very weird about the Flying Travarian.

Romari had cast Flight on all of us again, and we were all frantically looking for someplace familiar. The idea was that if we found someplace that looked familiar, we would fly off of the ship, so that we could walk home. If the ship looked like it was going to crash very soon, we would also fly off. Eventually we spotted what we all agreed was the shore of the Area Sea. We had all of us been there just a few months before. We hopped off and flew away. The ship disappeared in one of it's teleport jumps, and then a few seconds later, we teleported again ourselves! Right back to the Granite Keep with the Impetus moored to it's tower!

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BattleChad
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Re: AAR: The Flying Travarian

Post by BattleChad » Thu Jun 14, 2018 1:56 am

The Great Library of Throal thanks Thane for his contribution.

Journal Rewards: 1,000 Legend Points and 637 Silver

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