Pizazz's Ravenloft and Beyond

     Ketch turns to his comrades with a smug look on his face.  “I knew a little noise and pops of light would scare them off…”

     Seriously, he thought yo himself.  The things you can do with Thaumaturgy are astounding!

Mordekai hates the idea of just letting his precious concentration drop, so will continue to walk 20ft apart and in darkness for the next ten minutes. 

Ulthan heads over to one of the dead bugs both cooked and uncooked and takes a sniff. "hrmpfh poison not poison hrmpfh". He'll look over to the cat to see what the cat thinks. Not knowing this environment and generally insects can be a wild card he won't eat it, but pokes at it with his weapons to see how tough the shell is, wondering if it can be of any use. If the shell is colorful, he'll take an intact shell as he can find.

"Yeaaa... Sure..." Lionel was studying the sky and hills around for more swarms. THen picked up his spear and straightened in the saddle. "Whatever it was, it's gone. But that sone of a prince warned talked about those bugs as if about rain, like something that simply happens and can get us at any moment. Maybe in the mountains bugs are not present? Let us move." He liked that place less and less. The wizard was an idiot to leave that quiet cave with no bugs and a great sea view.

As they move Meepo would like to study the strange motes that are various colors all around them. Any sort of roll you want on that?

Meepo roll Arcana or Nature.

Ulthan roll Nature or Survival. 

Survival roll. 15. Add another 5 if my mountain/forest proficiency helps even though I'm pretty sure the motes are a precursor to storm, or a change in motes will further predict the storm.

Ulthan crouches down and examines bits of the bugs.  Their dead bodies ooze a bit of strange viscous liquid that isn't quite ichor. There is the blood like ichor as well, but some other thicker liquid, a bit like pudding that seems to be stored in the thing. The body bits actually have some meat in them. Especially the lightning bolt'd ones and the fireball'd ones.  He sniffs it with his cat, and finds that it's a lot like crab or prawn...when cooked...and quite sweet and tasty. No hint of poison or taint.  It could well be a good food source. 

Ulthan saves some of the weird pudding thing in a scroll case. I knew these waterproof containers were good for something. After grabbing whatever looks interesting like an intact shell and some legs, he looks ready to travel, sniffing the air and looking for bugs or storms, but mostly looking for caves.

Meepo arcana: 28

Meepo takes a few moments to explore the strange motes...and is surprised to find that they're actually small spirits. In fact, he'd figure they're some sort of tiny elementals that live amidst the terrain that they align to. They fade away and out sometimes, vanishing, and he might actually suspect that this land may be very closely aligned to the Fey wild in some way, if not being a world within the Fey to begin with. It's tough to say. He notes that they do respond to him, and the others, and occasionally he has noticed small, grey ones that seem to be undead aligned that flit about him. Most curious. 

The group completes their climb for the day and take shelter within Meepo's dome. There is no sign of any strange storms, but cloud and fog do seem to stir around the mountains as they've been climbing. At night, during a watch, a large beetle creature, perhaps the size of a horse, with razor sharp claws and a huge thick carapace comes crawling past. It pays no attention to the group's dome though, as the midnight black shell, reflecting starlight, moves past. Myriad smaller ones scuttle about outside as well but they're more like normal insects across the ground, just a bit bigger. 

The next day is blue skies as you continue climbing the trail that has turned into nothing more than a foot trail. You all pull out the cold weather gear as you pass the snow line proper and now the wind is cold and harsh. You find the air is starting to thin as well as you trek higher and higher. As you near the evening, you find yourselves facing a trail that seems to cut directly up across an icy cliff face.  Luckily you have the proper gear and the group is able to scale up the harder parts relatively well. The air has become thin and you're all breathing heavily with exertion. All except Ulthan who seems in his natural element here. 

Everyone make an Athletics DC 14 check.  8 or less, and you get 2 levels of exhaustion. 9 - 13 and you get 1 level of exhaustion. 14 or above, no exhaustion.

As the sky darkens towards night you see a thick black smear across the eastern sky. Clouds are pouring in. You press on for a few more minutes, following the trail over a small cliff. Here the mountainside splits, leaving a natural cleft in the rock. Descending into this cleft, you see an icy courtyard strewn with rubble. Hardy blue shrubs rise from the frozen ground. Lodged at the far end of the cleft is a keep sized for giants. Only the first floor and part of the second floor remain intact, the higher floors having collapsed long ago. The rubble left from this collapse surrounds what’s left of the keep. A twenty-five-foot-tall double door made of bleached wood with bronze fittings provides the only obvious entrance at ground level.

"Meepo no make that climb." Meepo tells the others. "Meepo wonder if Mordekai cast spell to get Meepo and Mordekai up climb?" If not he would climb into a pack and see if someone could carry him up. (Meepo has -1 to athletics, so the likelihood is he willl have 2 levels of exhaustion with little chance to make the DC 14 check...)

(sorry, the check isn't just for the cliff face, it's for the entire march up the mountain, everyone must roll....climbing a mountain is EXHAUSTING!)

Meepo athletics: 10 (Even if he is sitting on his phantom steed when it comes to everything but the climbs?)

Ketch Athletics:  10

     Ketch grumbles and mumbles through even the worst of it.  Specially the worst of it.  At one point he can be heard to say "If only someone had a helmet which could teleport us straight to the top most part that we can see..."

Exhaustion - Ketch 1 level

Ulthan trudges on wondering how many companions would fit into the portable hole. Athletics 12.
For other related incidents especially when we make it there. Perception 17, Survival 21, Stealth 24.
"hrmpfh go or storm hrmpfh"

(Meepo, you can have advantage on your check thanks to your phantom steed.)

((Would not everyone be affected by Lionel's aura (+3) to roll? For divine presence that eliminates tiredness?))

Lionel's Athletics DC 14: 22

Lionel had to dismiss his steed - warhorses are not meant to climb steep mountains - but managed on his own well enough, trying to help others on the barely visible path. Ketch was right about teleportation, but Lionel was not used to the helmet enough yet, and was not sure that wasting the only guaranteed way out of unpredictable situations (they seemed to happen quite often in this world) would be a good idea.

The relief of finding the keep was short-lived - the destination turned to be a pile of rubble. Unless... "Meepo? Can you tell if this is an illusion? If I were a paranoid wizard, I would definitely make my house look from the outside uninhabited."

Does Meepo share his thoughts about the motes?  If so, and Mordekai gets the sense of their connection to the Feywild, then Mordekai would try to turn his attention to them and use his Fey Presence ability - not necessarily so much to charm them as simply to reveal himself and his own (however vague) Fey connections, to try and commune with the motes in some way, to see if they can help us - whether they have any influence over the atmosphere, weather, terrain, etc, I don't know, and they may not care in the slightest about Mordekai's presence, but it's worth a shot.  Let's try for a more creative use of the ability!

If you want any further rolls to do with that, let me know.  And then the obligatory Athletics check: 13

     "If I could cast such illusion, I would make my home look like a unclimbable cliffside so nobody gave it a second thought but we should check this place over, then consider a rest," Ketch grunts.  "Don't want to pass by our wizard nor giants sneaking up behind us 'cause we didn't do due diligence..."

     "Give me a few first," Ketch says and then starts pulling a few items out of his pack and begins to ritually cast Detect Magic before they approach the keep too closely.