S07E07: The Gang Sticks their Brick in Crazy

== Previously on MCVFD ==
We finally reclaimed the Alpha monitoring station. In the course of doing so, we discovered five crystal chairs that act as psionic amplifiers to connect the listeners at this base to the listener at another base, so they can give status reports.
We made contact with a Limbo Petitioner that’s taken up residence at this station. We all remember a different name for him and decided it was not our problem to evict him.
We’ve learned that all of the other bases have had something bad happen:
* The base listening for the Modron March has gone silent
* The base watching phenomar had a voicemail saying the personnel were now captured for poaching
* The base watching a long-running gladiatorial contest with immortal warriors apparently drifted into the combat zone
* The base monitoring the Slaad spawning zone got under attack by Slaads
* The other base watching He Who Sleeps has some weird culty stuff going on
The group decided to go do the quiet one at Yggdrasil, the Beta station at the World Tree.
== Session ==
Everyone stocked up on the waffle bar before heading out. Kanye is asking whether or not to give the Professor any merch; Averlyth reminds him he’s made on fire.
Before we leave, Moody turns to us. He says he was watching the way we fight and he had some ideas. He says he’s here to stabilize the environment for us, but he thinks he could do a bit more. (Note: We leveled him up because we did a successful mission with him).
The group can experiment with creative ways for Moody to spin up combat arenas for the upcoming missions, or maybe a keyword where he’ll know to try and materialize something for us.
After some discussion, the group thinks that all of our current ideas (inspired by Ender’s Game, Portal, and a few other sources) might be a bit ambitious/impractical while our combat arena space has only 15 ft radius. For now, we spend our “upgrade” asking Moody to just extend the radius of the space - it’s now 30 ft radius.
We finally set out! We have a nice long walk through a bizarre scenario of Limbo. The walk takes an abstract, unknowable amount of time: it’s long enough for us to get bored, but not long enough for us to reconsider.
Yggdrasil is pretty much always visible; like He Who Sleeps, it’s just part in the landscape, always in the background. We’ve just been walking in it’s direction.
As we get close to the roots of the tree, we think we spot something on the horizon. Kanye doesn’t notice anything, he’s still trying to do the math on how big the combat space is now. Nissa doesn’t notice either.
Averlyth, Um and Sorith notice we’re walking towards what’s unmistakably the ruined foundation of the building. The reason we weren’t able to spot the listening station is because it doesn’t look like it’s here anymore.
Kanye makes a mental note to ask Qualish to put thermal vision in the suit.
Kanye wants to chuck a rock.Kanye: Do I need to roll to find a rock?DM: Give me… an intelligence check.Kanye starts scanning for a rock and almost immediately finds one. Kanye is not surprised. Nissa is very surprised because the rock was not there a moment ago.
We’re now in throwing range, and it’s self-evident that the wreckage here was from a base. There’s a bit of solid ground extending out in all directions from the foundation. There’s a  jumbled outline of a building, broken cinder blocks set into the ground, bits of rubble all around. It’s clear this building is no longer present.
Kanye throws his rock, and it sails through the building, clattering onto the bottom of the rubble and foundation.
Nissa asks Moody how easy it is to destroy something in Limbo if places here are held up by beliefs. He tells us it works just like it does on our plane. The idea of everyone believing in it just means the materials persist. Because it’s fueled by all of our collective beliefs, it also still behaves like the materials that we believe it to be.
Kanye wanders around feeling for the walls like a mime, in case it’s just an illusion. He walks the perimeter of the building just to make sure the walls are actually not there.
Nissa, Averlyth and Um investigate. To our best understanding, it’s exactly what it looks like. We also notice it’s not the rubble like the building was demolished - the building is missing like it was ripped off its foundation and ripped somewhere.
We don’t see any bodies or signs of violence.
Averlyth starts looking for a breadcrumb trail of rubble. She finds a brick 15 ft away from the building but then she loses the trail.Nissa: Does Averlyth tell us about the brick?Averlyth: Kanye I found a brick for you to throwKanye throws a perfect football spiral throw and it arcs into the distance. Um and Sorith watch this, then notice some rubble off in the distance past it. Kanye looks around for applause. Nissa wasn’t watching, Moody puts his cigarette behind an ear and gives a slow clap.
The rubble crumbs lead us towards the World Tree. Nissa thinks a tree house would have a WAY better view. Kanye wanders down the trail of rubble, pocketing bricks as he goes. He wants a selection of GOOD rubble, appropriately sized.
The group is also going down the trail and leaving Kanye behind when he’s taking too long with his bricks. Our best guess is something ripped the buildings off of its foundations and carried it off. We have no idea what would be capable of doing that, or how hard it would be in Limbo.
We follow the trail and start getting closer to the World Tree, the same way we’re getting closer to a mountain. We notice the World Tree is fairly unusual. We’ve been around large trees before and it looks like that, but it’s roots tend to grow in a circle or a whirl, and a shallow pool of glowing colored liquid is collecting inside the hollows of these roots. We’ve never seen anything like this before, but it reminds us of the wild magic that was dripping out of Peter the Perturbed’s Pyramids.
Sorith uses a bottle from his alchemist’s supplies to collect a sample. He dips the glass in, and two things happen. First, the glass itself is unaffected - it’s clearly not raw wild magic like last time, since it immediately mutates the material it contacts. After a few moments, the liquid stops glowing and it appears to be an unremarkable liquid. Whatever magical properties it has seemed to be connected to the pool instead of the liquid itself.
Averlyth asks Kanye for an extra standard issue glaive to dip into a pool. He tries to find her a very suitable one, then she reminds him something bad might happen to it. He gives her Fred instead of Susan; the group learns he named them??
Averlyth gets a singed, slightly used glaive. She goes to the nearest pool, maybe 2 or 3 feet across (the size of a well). She dips the glaive in there.
The first thing she notices is the liquid is completely opaque - she can’t see the glaive in the water. She doesn’t encounter any resistance, and when she pulls the glaive back out it’s completely normal.Averlyth: Hey Kanye, want to stick your head in there?Kanye gives a thumbs up with taking a deep sip.
Kanye takes a deep breath and jams his hand into a pool. Nothing happens.
He opens his hands up and closes it in his hand. When he lifts his hand with some water in his palm, it quickly drains away.Kanye: … Do you want me to stick my head in there?Averlyth says he doesn’t have to and gives Fred back.Kanye: I could just chuck a rock in there!Nissa: Or a brickKanye: oh! I’ll put a brick in there with a string, then I’ll pull it outNissa: Motherfucking scienceWe decide we’re done with experiments and continue following the rubble. We pass by a half down more puddles, and notice that as we’re getting closer to the World Tree the portals (DM meant to say puddles) are now bigger. Now some of them are five, ten feet across, and they are getting bigger and bigger.Kanye: Can you use one of your scryballs to see what’s in there?Averlyth: Not if you call it that. Did we make you head of our PR? That was a mistake.Nissa: Did we make him the head, or did we just follow him to the PR department…Kanye asks if anyone objects to him sticking his head in there. There are no objections. Kanye looks for a safe looking puddle. He kneels down, takes a deep breath, and then dunks his helmeted head into the water.
He feels a really weird sensation. In Limbo, he’s leaning in, but on this other side it feels like it’s leaning up, like he’s coming up out of the ground. It’s nighttime here, he can see bats flittering around, the sun appears to have set fairly recently. Kanye realizes after a moment that he’s in a graveyard and there is a large ominous castle on a hill in the distance.
Kanye pulls his head back out.Kanye: Yeah it’s just a puddle guys, I don’t know.The group keeps following the rubble. We pass more and more portals growing larger and larger. Eventually they are tens of feet across, and finally the trail of rubble stops in front of a very very large puddle. It’s large enough for say, a small building to go through. The trail of rubble very obviously ends here, as if they had trouble maneuvering through the puddle.Kanye: It looks like this puddle ate the buildingNissa: Yeah it’s too bad they’re just puddles, rightKanye sticks his head through. Once again, there’s a disorienting sensation as he goes through. He pokes up out of another puddle on the other side and looks around.
What he’s looking at is what he assumes is another plane, but this one is foggy? The sky is a dull silver in color, fading more into a purple at the horizon. There are what appear to be stars speckled around in the distance, but clustered near the horizon instead of in the sky. There are violet clouds, but they’re drifting by overhead, light and ephemeral. There are also clouds below, where there would normally be ground, just a dense thick cloud cover. The scene is hazy, dreamlike as he looks around.
Kanye pulls his head back out.Kanye: Hey guys, this one is some kind of portal?Averlyth sticks her head through next. She experiences a disorienting sensation - there is no gravity on this side of the pool. There’s a skyscape with stars, a scene she’s never seen before. She does notice some rubbles floating in the air near her. The bricks aren’t on any sort of ground, just slowly spinning. Off in the distance, she can see all the way into the horizon, the shape of something out at the edge of her vision.
Averlyth casts Scryball. Kanye posts his head into the puddle and is excited the name is catching on.
The Clairvoyance spot is just a little bit beyond where her field of view is. Where she is now, she can look back - she realizes she can’t see herself from that perspective. However, she can now very clearly see a conglomeration of debris, boats, structures, and stuff, combined to look like an island. Floating near this island are 3 flying sailing ships with weird wings on the side. Not like bat or animal wings, but clearly mechanical, magical technology. The ships are floating in the air. One of them is tied up and clearly docked at the island. Two of them, as she watches, unmoor and sail away in 2 different directions. One of them at the edge of her vision appears another glowing portal and dives into it and disappears. The third disappears out of view.
The island itself appears occupied. There appear to be Gith Yanki as opposed to Gith Zorai - rather than being monastic, they appear to be flamboyant pirates with swagger, clearly trying to outdo each other, covered in what she assumes are trophies from various raids. One’s got an ostentatious feather, another’s got a Miss Universe pageant thing, another’s got epaulets. They all drip pride, swagger and machismo.
The island itself is constructed rather than natural and is made out of a bunch of different building. Most notably, one looks suspiciously similar to monitoring station alpha, dropped unceremoniously on top of the pile. She can see people working on “attaching” it. Not quite stone masons, but throwing ropes over things and tying it together so it doesn’t float off.
None of these people appear to be moving by walking around. It takes a minute to notice it, but the legs aren’t moving, it’s like they just appear to go in the direction they seem to go. The movement just isn’t quite what my brain is expecting.
Averlyth pokes her head back out of the puddle and tries to relay what she saw to the group as boringly as possible so Kanye doesn’t get any funny ideas. Nissa recognizes it as the astral plane. She knows there are 2 ways to get there: one way is to astrally project yourself, another is to physically go there, which has all sorts of weird rules. She seems to remember that you don’t age while you’re in there?
Moody tells us that Gith Yanki are dicks.
Averlyth asks what the group is here for, if we actually care about the building. Moody tells us that based on what he knows about Dakkon, Dakkon wouldn’t care about the building itself, but he would care about the people that were in the building, as well as the crystal that was in there.
The group considers how we would deal with a zero gravity plane.Kanye: I have a plan. Are you guys ready for this? Can anybody fly?Averlyth: oh duh, YOU can flyKanye: Kanye is very smug with himself, I just learned about rhetorical questionsKanye proposes the group tethering to him in the astral plane, then he could use his power armor’s rocket boots to push the building all the way back to Limbo. Averlyth reminds him that we wouldn’t know what to do with the building once we got back, but we could steal a ship, do whatever the Gith Zorai did. We’re suddenly reminded by the DM that Moody can still change the gravity in the environment immediately around us.DM: I will point out there are a few small problems with this plan. One of these is pirates.Nissa reminds Kanye that we don’t need the building, and that the chair is likely removable. Kanye is now proposing we go fishing in the Astral plane with his body?? There’s a lot of discussion around our understand of physics in space.DM: I think the island is a couple hundred feet away, if I recall correctly.Um: So we need four ropes?Our best idea so far is a Kanye airdrop where his entourage is all tied to him.Kanye: I just want to make sure we’re just here for an extraction right, not taking over the Astral Plane?Sorith: I mean if we did that too, that would be greatDM: ??????We’ve established this isn’t the stealth plan. Nissa offers to cast an illusion of a giant air ship around us. The group is updating the plan to reflect that we don’t actually know where the chair or prisoners are. The group spends 20 more minutes deliberating without being all that clear about our assumptions or success criteria.
The group is tying themselves to the hooks all over the power armor and Kanye’s harnesses. He’s getting ready to pretend he’s a pirate.
Woodhouse, Moody, and the chariot are going to stay behind in Limbo. Nissa is offering to put an illusion around us. We suggest a cloud or debris for subtlety; Kanye suggests the bow of an airship or a dragon for surprise.
Kanye tries to ask Moody if the Gith Yanki are dangerous. He gives him the most scathing look, like a teenager who was just asked to explain TikTok, and then says yeah.
Averlyth asks if the group wants to get hired by pirates again. Kanye wonders if we can threaten them with an explosion or something, then asks Moody if the Gith Yankis take hostages. He sighs deeply, realizing that Kanye wasn’t going to leave him alone, and tells us some of the Gith history, when they were slaves a long long time ago to Ilithids. Someone named Gith led them to their freedom, then started on a campaign to eliminate the Ilithids. Someone opposed her and the races split from that difference in opinion. The Gith Yanki were the ones that stayed with Gith, the Gith Zorai were the ones that refused to become as bad as the Ilithids.
Kanye goes in for a hug. Moody slithers away, pats down his clothes and mutters under his breath. The team members tied to Kanye are all pulled towards them awkwardly.
FINALLY, the group goes through the puddle. We are able to hide in a cloud illusion by Nissa, and we drift slowly towards the base.
On our approach, we see at least 10 Gith Zorai wandering the island doing various things; one’s mending a sail on a ship, a couple are strapping ropes down on the newest building acquisition, some are carrying what looks like supplies, although it looks like junk. We see no signs of the listing post staff, and no sign of the crystal pedestal.
We are 50 to 100 feet away and no one has noticed us yet. Kanye observes a Gith Yanki to better know his enemy. We notice there’s nothing involving food anywhere around us - no graineries, no restaurants, nothing.
We also notice that none of us are breathing?? No one is suffering, we can still speak, the mechanics of drawing air into our lungs is still possible, but it doesn’t seem.. Necessary.
The group slowly orbits around the island to let Averlyth cast Locate Object to try and find the crystal. It seems like the chair is still within the building, which doesn’t have any big windows, just that giant slit and a big open door.
Averlyth reminds the group that can shape the stone to get us in. Sorith could also shatter the wall. Kanye asks what if we left the sneaky people in the building and we had a distraction.
Averlyth casts another Scryball, planting it in the entrance of the observatory room. The layout does match the layout of the other building. All the doors are open, and she can see that the Gith Yanki have been bringing in trophies? Keep sakes? They look like piles of random stuff, like a single jewel, a book, a nice leaf, things that don’t really seem like treasures. They’re piled up in the lobby.
The door to the cafeteria is open, and all the furniture appears to be knocked down in there. The door to the barracks is closed and locked, with a visible chain around the door handle. It has clearly been closed from this side. It’s a reasonable guess that room has hostages.
Looking inside the observation room, she sees a smaller version of the observation room from the Alpha station. There’s only one chair in the dead center of the room facing the window slit, there’s some desks and piles of papers, everything’s a mess from when the building was stolen.
Sitting in the crystal pedestal like he owns it is what looks like a Pirate Captain.