Engineering a Hostile Takeover of Desirable Real Estate

This post will cover several sessions - it's been a while since anyone's had time to update this. Apologies for dropping details along the way.

At the end of the previous battle on the ground, we had wiped out most of the invading force and were looking up at a suspicious-looking castle in the sky. Our few remaining live prisoners were happy to tell us how they got down, and how we could get back up - a method involving holding a rainbow-colored rock and reading what may be the lamest magical-trigger poem in history (not reproduced here, in large part because I've blocked it from my brain).

Using this gizmo, we were in fact able to whisk ourselves up to the cloud on which the rainbow-colored, crystalline castle sits (think Superman's hideout, crossed with just a touch of "My Little Pony"). There was no welcoming committee to greet us, and so we waltzed in, figuring that: a) whoever lives here sent the raiding party below, b) the raiding party were bad, c) therefore the people living here are bad. Moreover, having a flying castle seemed like a cool idea, and so we decided that a change of management would be in order. At various points along the way, we've been measuring for curtains, discussing decorating options ... but more on that later.

Once inside, we followed our never-failing mantra: Always Go Left. The castle is arranged as a ring of octagonal spires surrounding a large central spire, so this seemed to make sense. We first encountered some nasty gargoyles who apparently live on the roof - Brian ended up wearing one as a hat for a while, but we dispatched them and moved on (note for later: must call pest control about the roof...) We found an empty library, an empty magical lab, a lone guard who, taken by surprise, was happy to consent to being tied up instead of being filleted, and a room full of more guards practicing. These we had fun wiping up, and in the process we picked up a wizard (Kevin's new character) who swore he didn't want to be there and therefore wanted to join us. We still don't entirely trust him - especially since he seems to be a necromancer of some sort, and may have a multiple personality disorder to boot (now there's a fun combination!)

We also ran into more of the frog/dog-like demon things, and discovered that they can teleport. Our first encounter wiped out one, but two disappeared. Our next encounter with three of them wiped out two, but not before the teleported behind us and dropped both Bill and Jeff. A third got away, guaranteeing that the castle's owners (a sorceress named Irinia and her demon-summoning sidekick Caxathros - never trust someone with an X in their name) knew we were there.

We discovered, after the second demon battle, an imprisoned wizard's apprentice. We let him out, and he preceded to tell us how the castle had been stolen from its creator, a very powerful wizard who (because the castle's "engine" has been broken) is now trapped somewhere in another plane (we're voting for the Semi-Elemental Plane of Ranch Dressing). He told us that if we can put the engine back together (by gathering the various gemstone pieces from around the castle and reassembling them in a pedestal at the center of the castle) we may be able to bring the creator wizard back. Though we had really been looking forward to owning a large flying crystal castle, we have reluctantly agreed that this is probably the best strategy.

As we started to plot how to take down Irinia and Caxathros, they brought the fight to us. Two demons showed up, opened a door at one end of the room, and then slammed it shut, closing off that end. Then three more popped into the room and started causing havoc in the middle. As we turned to deal with those, Irinia and Caxathros themselves showed up at the other end. Caxathros transformed in a very large, VERY scary demon-like thing. We don't quite know what Irinia is doing yet, but Craig's lizard-man has apparently switched sides and has been putting large holes in Mike's dwarf.

At the point we stopped, we'd put down three or four of the frog-demons, and (thanks to Jeff's boom-stick) managed to put one hole in the big Caxathros-demon. But a lot of us are pretty serious hurt, and we're running out of both energy and options. Maybe we should have brought the powerful creator-wizard back first...