Pizazz's Ravenloft and Beyond

"Meepo think we have only lead to mountain." Meepo points out. He glances to the portal. "Wish Meepo knew how activate, could send Rat through and see where go..." he sighs and looks to the map. "Meepo say map best lead got." He reiterates. Moving to the strange device in the center of the chamber, he looks it over, trying to see if he can figure anything more about it. Does it look like a place to attach the strange canon device, or is it something else?

Meepo Arcana: 11

     “We’ll the map did say ‘here?’ On it,” Ketch thinks aloud.  “Perhaps we try the word in as many languages we know?  Or even the name of the mountains?”

     “And we could always try teleporting by the helmet… but I suspect we’d only find ourselves where we hoped one out of four times… at best.  We could find ourselves at some random mountain halfway round the world…”

Examining the dias in the middle of the room.....and the grooves in the floor, along with the schematics Ketch and Ulthan had found, Meepo is sure that this was where he was either planning on assembling, or assembled the cannon in this spot. He's unable to tell if his attempts were successful based on the empty pad however.

"Maybe try same words as opened portal to this place..." Meepo suggests, looking to the others. "No sure why wizard be foolish enough do that, but try maybe?" He moves to the portal and does so, if no one stops him, but is not expecting it to work.

You guys try some variations on "here" and also the words used to open the other portal. Neither of those seem to activate the portal. 

Meepo tries to bring any of the items they found in this place, and touch them to the portal. He will then try anything else he has on him, including any bits and pieces of his various 'finds' that he has on his person just now. As he doesn't truly expect anything of that to do much, he simply is trying all options before committing to the likely-problematic teleportation option. "Meepo wonder how long take walk..." he comments.

"If we think there's any kind of trap, we could always hand the map to the other wizard and see what happens? If we're trying to take down a wizard to set free the genie, the wizard's arch-rival might be an asset? Etain knows of him.  Although two powerful unpredictable customers might be worse than one."

     "I do like idea of confronting the depressed one.  Something made him that way.  Finding out may help us..." 

Lionel did not participate in the attempts to open the portal, he could not even imagine where to start to search for a random word (provided it is a word - did not someone tell them it can be anything? From some thought up to a combination of objects and moves?) "I wonder if those ghosts that we released knew something about the place..." But that was just thinking out loud. He had his doubts, though, about the drunk. "From the description and the look of his favorite "tavern" that man is completely broke and broken too. Whether he remembered anything or not, he will say anything for a couple of coins and we would never know if that was the truth. And I am strongly against giving him the map. We do not know anything about any of these wizards. You already tried to intimidate the dragon, maybe instead of questionable malicious manipulations try an honest search? I do believe the map can be genuine, the first draft, maybe. And speaking of the map..."

"Genie? You might never see it, but what of this plane itself? Know anything about the mountains over there? Maybe your Master mentioned his love to the mountains? Something "I would love to live there"?"

The genie responds, "He did talk about Cloud giants to me. He was obsessed with a flying fortress, which cloud giants have been known to create.  And....the place is called the Cloud Mountains.  Maybe he was just desperate."

The group hangs out as a growing pile of detritus litters the floor around the bottom of the doorframe. Meepo sits there, tossing bits, baubles, and so on at the sealed doorway. The task seems fairly hopeless though...and the time ticks by. A sewing pin, a silver coin, a copper coin, a gold coin, a platinum coin, an emerald, a button, a hand full of sand, a glass of water, an empty cup that just had some water in it, a shirt, some dirty underwear, a book, a map, a pencil, a ruler, a rock, a paper weight, a glowing stone, a bit of coral from the floor.......

The wall behind the doorway shimmers and pulses and glows briefly before the view of a rock wall is replaced with a view into a dark room. Old crates and barrels sit in a lengthly dusty space crammed full of equipment. It looks like a very large and extended storage closet. Shelves against the stone walls are full of boxes and urns and bags. Nothing here looks like its been touched in years. The room looks like it extends backwards into the dark 100 feet before reaching a solid back wall. Wooden beams are erected around the walls and stretch across the ceiling of the rectangular room. 

     "The broken, drunken wizard may speak lies...  But I have a spell which may let us know if he does.  Something drove him to drink, it's worth a few questions I think," Ketch replies. "But yes, I agree on keeping the map away from eyes which do not need to see it."

     "Oh, hum..." Ketch says, a bit startled by the new... closet?  "Say Meepo...  I don't suppose a skellie would like to go in and investigate?  I'd have for one of us to get trapped forever or something."

"Cloud Giants? Did he hope to live with them or somehow get their citadel from them? He had to be incredibly self-confident in both cases." An interesting conversation was interrupted by a little miracle - Meepo did manage to open the portal! Lionel looked at the pile of garbage, sorry, lost things on the floor, then at the suddenly opened door. "I wonder what is the key here?" He pushed away the thought of the dirty underwear be the key component and curiously peeked inside. For a moment the problems of battling giants in the unknown lands were forgotten. Lionel reached the bag and pull it out of the closet, then opened.

"Meepo send." Meepo says, scrabbling to his feet, as he had been staring at the door for a long moment, not quite believing it had actually worked. He opens his hole wide and calls forth a single skeleton. he sends it into the closet area to start hauling things in there out into this room.

"hrmpfh mad wizard mad at us hrmpfh" seems to ponder for a while scratching the big cat's head and then says... nothing more... apparently at a loss on how to identify that map... but then all of a sudden his face seems to light up then go dim then light up then go dim then he says "hrmpfh where wizard from hrmpfh".

"Which wizard? Mordenkainen the mad wizard, Zikran the bad wizard, or Laffa the sad wizard?" It occurs to Mordekai that they might be getting tangled up with too many Wizards.

Lionel snatches a bag from the room and opens it to look inside. It looks like it contains dried out apples. They may have once been red and delicious, now they were shrivelled dried out husks.  Meepo's skeleton walks past Lionel and into the room...grabs a barrel, and drags it out into the cave.....then goes for another.  It begins methodically emptying the 100 foot deep room packed full of supplies, into the cave. After several minutes of this, Meepo realizes that there's no immediate threat and if he wants to get it done in less than a week, he should probably use more skeletons.  Soon there is a parade of skeletons going in and out dragging good and supplies.  The room is a bit larger than the cave, so soon the cave begins to look like a supply room itself, full of dusty old gear. 

Amidst the goods are barrels of water that seems still pure and clean. There are also barrels of sap, and oil, and sea water. There are bags, barrels and crates of old dried out or long rotted food. There are strange things like big crates of nothing but dirt or sand or broken glass. There are rods ingots of steel, beams of wood, piles of hemp and rolls of fabric. You also find a few dozen old ratty backpacks filled with adventuring gear.  Finally also however, a skeleton comes marching out with something that Meepo immediately flags, as he's been watching for anything magical. Indeed, the skeleton has a wooden box with something magical inside it.  Popping it open, you see a book. Written in Sylvan, the title reads The Scrivener’s Tale.  It is bound in soft brown leather, its title embossed on the book’s cover and spine. It is seven inches tall and five inches wide. Its pages appear to be ancient, delicate parchment, but age does not seem to have done any harm to it. Meepo's detect magic spell reveals that the book gives off auras of illusion and transmutation magic, but an identify spell doesn't reveal why or how the book is magical or its purpose.

"Meepo found another book." Meepo speks up, calling attention to the book he now holds. "Meepo not sure Meepo should read book now..." He says though, with a frown. "Books get Meepo and Meepo's friends into many situations since come to strange place..." He decides to put the book into his pack for later. If nothing else of interest was in the storage area, Meepo has his skeletons start to replace the stuff in there once more.

     Ketch will cast his own Detect Magic, if Meepo doesn't object.  Mainly he's curious how this book "reads" in comparison to the genie book and the book used to go into the other realm and rescue the bard.  Besides satisfying that curiosity Ketch is fine with waiting on the opening of this book until a more settled seeming time...

     "I believe he's curious where Zikran is from.  If we have a place of reference to start from then perhaps we could compare the mountains on the map to other maps to see if they match?" Ketch asks, looking to Ulthan to see if he caught the just of his idea.

     "Whatever our next step... I suggest we leave this place with our findings now.  Lock up our windfall and return later if necessary, or desirous." Ketch says, making his own points now.  "We're not sure that 'folding' spell will hold the dragon forever.  And this seems a likely place for it to return to.  If and when we face it again I suggest we do so prepared, not looting..."

     All in all, Ketch is just getting itchy standing around the lair.  He believes we could return later if we plan to make it our own, but now is not the moment to set up tents and bedrolls.

"hrmpfh think all wizards meet us hrmpfh" Ulthan says thoughtfully, at least it would appear so if it wasn't sounding like he was simultaneously dying and some magical mouth without inflection.

"You - we - took the treasure. Here or anywhere else we are the enemies of that particular dragon. Bronzes, as far as I remember, are law obedient creatures. Their law, of course, but the theft is definitely on the list. What I mean is, where we are camping does not matter anymore, he will begin his search for us the moment he is out of his prison. If Zikram is here, on this plane, I'd rather not have the dragon between us and the mountains. Might make sense to return here as fast as possible. But speaking of the prison - Etain , what was it and for how long did we lose the dragon?"

Young tiefling was supposed to know what happened with the dragon. But regardless of the answer, the group simply was not ready for mountain climbing. "How do you use that helmet? Collection of pieces from the places and then - simple command?" Lionel was ready to take all the useful items and move back to their inn to sort things out, make a shopping list and prepare for the expedition to the mountains. Maybe after talking to Laffa.