We last left our heroes in the prison of High Rock, seeking to rescue the navigator Captain Morgan from the Arch Mage's maximum security prison. The party had crept out onto a ledge, only to be ambushed by flying automatons, which they managed to fight off eventually. Amras cast a colour spray to summon our flying skiff, which delivered Jordan Young, the pirate bard, to reinforce the party. Proceeding back into the rock, we entered the cell marked 666, in which was imprisoned a demon.
Ordinarily, this might have resulted in a battle, but the demon seemed to want to converse with Amras. It seems Amras is deemed a figure of importance by the denizens of the abyss, and he struck a deal with the demon on the spot, gaining its promise of service. The elf wizard seems to wield undue influence in the nether regions. Worrying.
We eventually managed to locate and spring Captain Morgan, who turned out to be a medusa and not a rum magnate. We also took time to loot the Arch Mage's study and abscond with some shiny things. This session took place some time ago now, so I'm a little vague on the details. Plus I've had a lot to drink since then.
We are starting to encounter a problem with traps, namely Sartheen's total inability to discover them. Although he is the party's rogue, trap finding in 13th Age is based off a Wisdom roll - even with his Shadow Port Thieves' Guild +4 skill package, he is still trailing behind the Tiefling barbarian's combined Wisdom and 'Lady Investigator of the Priestess' background. Hence, it was in the mage's study that we first began to realise that Sartheen's abilities as a trap finding rogue were somewhat lacking. He is still able to trigger the traps he finds with remarkable alacrity, however. Cue fire balls.
Escaping from High Rock a little toasted, we had a minor altercation at the docks with the locals, who felt we ought not to be leaving so soon. We convinced them otherwise, and sailed on towards the city of Concord, where we dropped anchor after some days of relatively peaceful sailing (apart from the odd argument with the bossy medusa, who seemed to think this was now her ship). Proceeding on foot from Concord, we returned to the court of the elf queen, which regular readers may recall can be easily be found by other elves, even through it roams around like an itinerant posse of rabid fashionistas.
The elf queen then dispatched us to a rocky island off the coast to steal some dragon's eggs, belonging to the Three. We were apprised that the political situation between the Three and the Queen was deteriorating following our strike against one of the Three's strongholds, which you can read about in a previous episode. We sailed to the island, which has steep cliffs and a ruined monastery on its summit, and is very reminiscent of another island of similar temperament...
Scouting the coast, we discovered a sea cave that led into the tunnels under the island. Here we fought with kobolds, who in 13th Age are dirty little tricksters who take advantage of characters who used Wisdom as their dump stat (most of us by the sounds of it - Rarity excepted). No longer are they the luckless sword fodder of elder editions of The Game.
Elsewhere in the tunnels we were set upon by black dragon spawn assassins (we slew them all) and ran into an undead monk (yep, slew him too). Eventually, after another run-in with tricky kobold scum and an opportunistic trio of young dragons, we came across the eggs, basking in the sunlight in the monastery's central courtyard. Except they weren't eggs at all, but an illusion. And then three of us stumbled through an invisible portal and disappeared, leaving Amras and NeOn nervously looking at each other....
NB - the final encounter in the monastery may have been with dragon spawn, in which case, my profuse apologies to kobold kind.
An excellent summary! I had forgotten about The Black Island; perhaps I should have introduced a gorilla!
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