Editing Climbing the Bird Gradient (section)

==Phoenix Feather Hunt==

We head north to around where Scout said we should go, at the base of the mountains. 
The sage said Dubrecht should "climb the tree of feathers" and would eventually find the Phoenix.

There isn't an obvious path up the mountain; we land and look around.   Stella finds some greyish brown feathers.  Managaratha identifies them as harpy feathers.   Stella makes us earplugs. 

A harpy grabs Gale, and is promptly taken down by Diomarche.
Stella stabilizes her and we tie her up to interrogate.

Diomarche and Gale and Dubrecht hear three more harpies incoming and singing.  Gale thinks we should untie the harpy.   Dubrecht disarms Gale of the harpy, leaving her with a lily. 

Diomarche draws his sword and shouts: "We're not here for any of you, we're just on a quest."

Two hover near Diomarche, not attacking, and he whomps them with hoof and sword.  One goes down, and the other flies away with her.   Gale complains about this whole "stop or I'll shoot" thing, but Diomarche notes that the traditional followup is to shoot. 

Managaratha checks the blood splatter of one of the harpies - not Broken. 

Managaratha naps as Dubrecht follows the trail of the harpies. 

As we get near the harpy nest, we search again and find a big white feather.    That's a pegasus feather.  (They're not intelligent, it's somewhat unusual for them to live in the mountains.)

We fly briefly to look for mesas / valleys.  (Nothing looks mesa-plausible in this sort of mountain.)  Stella thinks that way looks better for valleys than the rest.    We unfold the boat and head that way.   We get to a valley.    Diomarche does some tracking, and finds hoofprints. 

Scout arrives, to save everyone!  Or at least help find things.x

We follow the tracks for a ways, until we get to a place where there is blood and more pegasus feathers.   Managaratha gives Scout blood sense, and he tries to follow the scent - off that way.   We go that way. 

The trail heads up and out of the valley and up a mountain.   We get to a mostly-devoured Pegasus, with roc feathers around it.  

We collect all the roc feathers here, and take a bunch of the pegasus feathers as well. 

Scout thinks there aren't enough trees to support a nest.  Maybe a roost.   More looking around turns it up, napping.

We don't see any Phoenix feathers,   Scout sneaks up to it.    (He thinks he is not on its usual yummy list, but it would attack if annoyed). 

We wait for dark.     Scout spots some little burny things under the Roc, and a REALLY BIG DEMON just on the other side of the mountains a few miles that way.   Lucky our Saurian got food poisoning and didn't show up to the run. 

Managaratha thinks that teleporting the feathers would have Consequences.  

Will the roc mookify us?  Maybe. But the roc will go much faster than us.  

Scout finds (with DI) a safe cave to hide in.   Managaratha memorizes the location of the cave.  

We come up with an elaborate plan involving hiding in caves and teleporting people.
“If something stupid happens, I can make it even more stupid,” says Managaratha.

We enact the plan!  Dubrecht starts an avalanche.  The roc heads into the air.  Scout gets two phoenix feathers.     Managaratha extracts Scout, who is promptly on fire.   He doesn't go down, and with Stella's help does stop drop and roll.  Healing is also non-magical, and the feathers does not go out.