30. September 18, 2011

Our bold heroes travel to the minotaur's lair, to seek a connection to the fey wild so we can speak to the Eladrin. Within the lair is a vampiric minotaur! The party fights him, and Shelby cleverly uses her Spark of Life artifact to return him to mortal form. Upon becoming mortal once more, the formerly-vampiric minotaur tells us everything we want to know.

He tells us that he was a runt as minotaurs go, and he jumped to accept a deal from a dark-skinned tiefling to make him a powerful vampire in exchange for unfettered access to the minotaurs' Main Lair (the room where the Eladrin lady is buried, with the connection to the fey wild). [Reminder: dark-skinned tieflings don't exist in nature. So this was either a half-breed Nemian/Nezhuapili (bad avatar representing the land) or else was one of the original demons with whom the ancient Nemian and Nezhuapili races made their deals.]

In the feywild, the village we formerly visited is abandoned. We follow threads of our two Eladrin lady friends, and learn that their physical bodies went to the island/material plane but their spiritual essences went somewhere else.

We return to the material plane, to the minotaur maze. Kayla senses the Eladrin ladies are northeast, so we begin traveling in that direction. The party spots a coatl in the west, and the nefarious Shelby Thundersword wickedly goads innocent Darwynn into getting its attention with a lightning bolt. [Hey, writers call the history as they see it. -editor] The coatl plummets from the sky.

It take two days to track down the coatl, which is coiled up as if waiting for us. It permits Shelby and Kayla, who are both worshippers of Avandra (for whom the coatl is an avatar), to mount it and at Shelby's request it carries them to Avandra's Stone in the care of the halfling paladins on the mainland. The wind currents look funny and change behind it. The coatl lands in a halfling village on stilts in the swamp in which Shelby originally gave her oath as a paladin. The senior halfling gives Shelby the Stone after she explains her need. Then Shelby asks the old man for any stories he can share with her about it. Recognizing this could take some time, Kayla embarks on a mission to sample all the fine cuisine the halflings have to offer.

The elder halfling explains, over the next 30 hours, several stories and facts to Shelby regarding the coatl:

• • The coatl is a manifestation of one facet of Avandra's avatar: Change. (Her responsibilities are Change, Luck, and Travel.)

  • Avandra unleashes the coatl when the world neeeds Change, to right the world. The last time she sent it, the face of the planet was wiped clean, to let the planet try again. The change doesn't necessarily end all life on the planet, it just changes it.

  • Among halflings, Avandra is the maker of the world; she keeps recreating it, if the life on the world fails.

  • After each Change, the essence of the coatl is made into some form (a rock) that halfings are given charge of, until a new coatl comes and looks for it.

  • Our coatl couldn't ask for the stone on its own because something is wrong with it (oops! that was us, interrupting the Yuan-Ti ritual and lessening its powers!)

  • After a Change, the Giants typically are the first on the scene and gather up the essence of the spent coatl, and if Halflings are present, the Giants entrust [the rock] to the Halfling(s) there.

  • The Change has happened 6 times that the elder knows of.

Shelby and Kayla return to the mainland. They notice that when Shelby holds the Stone in contact with the coatl, both the Stone and coatl's scales change colors.

The party travels to the Outcasts, who tell us how some Nezahualpili know a technique to separate people's spirts from their bodies, and use the remaining corpses to do work. The Nezahualpili have necromancers, flesh crafters, and the Cullers who separate body/spirit.