Climbing the Bird Gradient

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.

Heart of Yellow

We sail south towards the X. There are more Yellow surgey things which are kind of annoying but not damaging. There is a fancy door on the side of a cliff. "Open Sesame" in Jabaran works to open it.

We enter the maze of Gootmu! It’s a strange world. We have one action, we can use it to Move forward in the Maze the number of successes. We lay out new tiles as we encounter them. Gale thinks the Heart is about 8 tiles in. Tiles without anyone on them / in line of sight of them vanish. If we’re on a tile that becomes disconnected, it is BAD, in the becomes-disconnected-from-reality way. Fortunately, we’re on the same Battlemap, and the disconnected tile gets pulled back into connection. Diomarche discovers he can break down walls, for one DI (though it increases

Eventually, we find a Gootmu, which is an Exit. We are somewhat scared. Eventually Managaratha looks at one of these Doors, and discovers that they are doors back to Reality. Where exactly in Reality, it’s not clear.

Eventually, Managaratha goes in. He comes back in and says the water is fine tea is good and we can come in. After more checking to see if he’s been zotted, everyone eventually goes through a door, where there is an older Jabaran women, a table, and tea. She asks why she should let us through to the Heart of Yellow. Um. To put back the Rainbow river?

We should figure out why the Rainbow River was taken apart before deciding to put it back together. Managaratha thinks about it-- it was broken up to help fight the Slith, by giving Magic to all the countries. She does not think that is a good enough reason to go through. But she will give us three questions, as a consolation prize.

Managaratha asks, “Why is Feelings Magic changing?” We all agree that is a question. The Lady of Love wishes Feelings magic to be in the Goddess’ domain, rather than Orellian's. The Guardian (no name given) thinks she may not be successful, although if she gets to the Heart she might have better success, and she could make other progress. Orellian is further away this Comet than he has been, as he has been… busy recently.

Why is the Oasis after Nesh? The Oasis has eaten most of the desert, it wants to continue growing. There are a few options: Into Jabar, which would be difficult for a number of reasons at present; or into the Homelands, I suppose you’d call them, that is currently protected by Nikolai’s anti-magic anti-DI fields. The Oasis wants to take that down and needs Nikolai’s heir to do that.

What does she want us to know / want to tell us? Managaratha gets 2 out of 2 Karma successes.

The Breaker’s main plots are:

• Take over the Empire
• Corrupt the Spirits in the Forest
• Destroy (or corrupt) the Orange Zone
• Promote the disagreements between Rush and the rest of the Five
• Assassinate enough of the Blue Mages that Melmane falls to Chaos (more than it already has)
• Send enough slith into Jabar to conquer it.

And now it is time to be going. Where do we want to go? We dither about abandoning Jabar. Other Dunyazade (because we assume that’s who it is) says we’re probably not getting much more done here.

We decide on His Majesty’s Court, in Green. We tell Dubreck to call us.

Loot

• A bunch of Pegasus feathers
• A number of Roc feathers
• 1 Phoenix Feather
• +10 EPs
• +10 SPs