The session started with party having just escaped from Carceri via the portal in the center of town. Given their rather beat up physical condition, and worried about immediate pursuit, the party elected to rest and hide by ducking into one of Jack's rope trick spells. Most of the party slept as Rusteen and Greymankle kept watch for any pursuers - none came. Feeling somewhat more healthy, the party was able to leave the rope trick and explore their new locale.

Zin decided to divine their location and discovered that the party was now in a place called "The Garden" on the "Plain of Inifinite Portals". The gith took this to be a reassuring sign, despite feeling slightly uneasy, as he was certain there was a portal to get home nearby. Jack then partially burst the party's bubble by reminding everyone that the "Plain of Inifinite Portals" was another name for the first layer of the Abyss. The party immediately decided to find a way off, even if it meant hiking overland to Broken Reach, the gatetown to the Outlands.

As the party began trekking through the deceptively pleasant grasslands and patches of albino sunflower plants, a few of the party detected the odor of burnt flesh. The two Sensates in the group also detected the scent of ozone, allowing them to guess that whatever they were smelling had been struck by lightning. Being the good player characters they are, the party decided to track down the source of the odor and investigate.

They soon came to a shallow depression in the ground, some 100 feet across. At the bottom in the center lay a very badly charred body. Some long distance scouting noted that the body had two magical items on it. Drawn by the lure of treasure, Rusteen started down the slope to go get them. At a point about 30' away from the body, he was attacked.

At first glance, Rusteen and the party assumed that the 12 small, translucent figures that rose up out of the ground around the woodsman were undead - ghosts of some kind. Zin quickly identified them as something he was quite familiar with - astral constructs of the lowest order. This meant that there were a large number of psionic creatures nearby.

As it turned out, over the course of the battle, the psionic creatures were actually a single plant which lay in wait at the bottom of the depression. The long fight saw the plant summon slightly higher power constructs, attack the party's minds, as well as electrocute several members with biokinetic lightning. Eventually, Zin located the six flowers in the vast field that were the source of the attacks. He then directed the group to destroy the flowers.

As part of this, Shazarr attacked a random flower - one not part of the Udoroot - and got severely poisoned. The rest of the party removed the six dangerous blooms in relatively short order once they knew were to strike. (It was actually a fairly impressive battle; Rusteen got a pair of critical hits with a longbow to sever two blooms, Jack got a critical with his crossbow to do the same, Greymankle did one of his flying tiger leaps to destroy a blossom, and Zin even waded into melee and got a critical [48 pts!] with his weapon to sever a bloom. I don't recall how the last one died.) Once the plant had been disabled, the party decided to play it safe and not kill it as the mission wasn't over. This didn't stop Jack and Rusteen from "watering the flowers". (For their troubles, they got a divine spell on scroll, a magic morningstar, and 100 cage.)

From there, the party travelled further and reached the edge of the Garden. Nearby, they spotted a portal underneath a white tree. As they got closer, they could see that the tree was actually another dangerous plant - a viper tree. (It resembles a tree, but has poisonous snakes for branches.) However, the more observant members also spotted metal in the grass - coins. So, several of the party spent a few hours using mage and far hand to gather up a number of infernals, and one magical crystal. In the meantime, Shazarr - who could understand the tree's whispers - managed to trick it into revealing a hint about how the portal worked. He guessed that the key was simply someone who wasn't native to the Abyss. So, the party just ran at full tilt past the tree and through the portal.

This put the party inside a small cavern on the plane of Pandemonium. There were only two exits - the portal they entered by and another - plus a table with 7 bottles and a riddle. The riddle told the party that the keys to the portals were two of the seven potions on the table. (It also hinted that 2 were wine and 3 were poison.) The number of bones in the room hinted at just how serious this little logic puzzle was. But, in fairly short order, Jack was able to decipher the riddle, take the potion for the exit portal and activate it, allowing the party to leave.

This finally put the party somewhere safe - on Arborea, near the Gilded Hall of the Sensates. Flushed with relief to be home (relatively speaking), the party made use of their two Sensates to gain entrance and take a portal back to Sigil. From there, they returned to Augustus to get paid and finally be allowed to kill things again.

Here endeth the adventure. At least one week of game time will pass before the next session begins, allowing time for rest, experience gain, and shopping.

Authored by: Ken Lipka E-mail me: krlipka@yahoo.com

Return to Stories Page