And finally... a successful plan. As such, the game session was fairly short.

Not ones to be deterred by failure or great bodily harm, the party finally came up with a plan to resuce the Titan's prisoner and (at Shazarr's insistence) make a tidy profit as well. The plan would involve teleporting into Crius' Temple - in an art gallery they'd explored before - and then use invisibility magic to send half the party (Twig, Rusteen, and Jack) sneaking through the building to find where the prisoner was kept. As soon as the prisoner was found, that half of the group would teleport away to a predetermined location on Carceri. In the meantime, the other half of the party (Oz, Buttercup, and Shazarr) was going to use a lot of shrink item spells (and a teleport) to make off with at least a dozen of the Titan's artistic treasures, which Shazarr estimated at being worth tens of thousands of cage each.

Well, it was a nice thought, at least.

The art heist was spoiled by the fact that Crius - the Titan of Weight and Density - had apparently tried to make his art impossible to steal by making each piece weigh several tons. As a result, Buttercup - after being magically buffed and then raging - could only carry two of the paintings, after they'd been magically shrunk. However, steal two paintings the party did, and then teleported to the rendezvous spot. That spot happened to be in the "bar" of a town close to the Temple. Since it was so close, Crius had sent a squad of his ogres there just in case. But, the larcernous half of the party managed to escape via Oz's magic.

And that was the part of the plan that went smoothly.

The other half of the party found that guards were posted at all the intersections of the hallway that ran around the perimeter of the Temple. Some recon by Jack's familiar eventually found the prisoner - hanging in a bird cage very near the Titan's throne. A throne which was occupied by the Titan at the time. Thinking quickly, the rescue squad created a loud distraction in the hallway, hoping to pull the Titan out of the throne room in order for them to rush in and free the prisoner. While that part of the plan worked, they sorely underestimated the being's perceptive abilities and Crius spotted them easily, despite they're being invisible. Of course, once the Titan dispelled their invisibility, they were even easier to see.

At the point, Twig showed remarkable courage - or perhaps just foolhardy belief in her own personal multiverse. Knowing they would be destroyed if they hesitated, the fully buffed Signer simply picked up Jack and Rusteen and ran full bore towards the prisoner. Caught off guard by the reckless action, the Titan could only attempt to swat the wood genasi as one would swat a fly. The swat connected, but wasn't enough to flatten Twig. As a result, she was able to get to the prisoner, allowing Jack to reach through the bars to touch him, and then teleport everyone to safety. There was a brief moment of panic as this half of the party arrived in the middle of the ogres the other half had eluded. But Oz had been watching for their arrival, and simply dimension door'd into the correct location and then teleported everyone to true safety.

In the end, the party made a reasonable profit from selling 40,000 cage worth of art. They also were able to spend a very well deserved rest on Mount Olympus, at one of Dionysus' drunken revels. Once the hangovers are gone, the party can decide if they finally want to get the Harmonium off their backs by forcing Rusteen to go and get that paladin's sword.

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

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