Strange Magic - 24/11/2021 - A Kavel Perspective

Rendez Vous at Portal Plaza

The portal in the centre of Daring Heights was closing up business for the day. The assistant there looked like she was waiting for the late scheduled adventurers travelling to D’Avalon. I was one of them, and so too was comrade Gerhard who was waiting by the portal.

I walked over to Gerhard and greeted my comrade of a few adventures now. He was inspecting the portal and noting the runes, which he copied onto some parchment that he was always carrying around.

There was a small humanoid between Gerhard and the portal assistant, Aurelia. Whilst Gerhard was copying runes, the halfling was looking at the portal inquisitively. He also had many tools on him. I looked at Gerhard and asked:

“Comrade, is the portal broken? Is the small person here to fix it?”

The halfling was called Sterling Pan, and he took exception to me referring to him as short.

Sterling responded back to me with sharp tongued comments about my own height. He insisted that tall people like me must continually bang their heads on door frames. But, this isn’t true. I can see that most doors are too small. So, I know to duck when walking through them. But, there is a problem - back muscles are vulnerable to strain when walking hunched over. I guess at the expense of finding it difficult to reach objects on a shelf, smaller humanoids probably suffer less back pain. I was about to share this observation, when another adventurer arrived.

Sterling, it now dawned on me, was an adventurer too. This was the reason he was here.

The new arrival was Voxovan, a tiefling woman. She waited with us for two more adventurers - familiar comrades of mine - Ragtag the yuan-ti man, and Kelne my halfing smashy-hands sibling from another race.

Aurelia, the portal assistant, set the portal for D’Avalon and my team of adventurers and I walked through. The portal was easily large enough so that I didn’t need to duck down to avoid banging my head. As I noticed this, I pointed out to comrade Sterling that, “this entrance is quite tall”.

“Must be a nice change for you” Sterling quipped back. And he was right, it was. Maybe the next time I visit the Daring Heights Council, I should recommend to them to increase the height of entrances in town.


D’Avalon

The buildings here look strong. Grey sandstone and white marble constructions - all about the same height too. Whoever the architect is, I commend them - standardised strong buildings. To me, this is spectacular.

The building behind us - the cathedral - this one stood tallest amongst the others, and this was where we needed to go, to meet our employer Lady Dahlia, Mistress of the Towers.

Inside the cathedral, there were many people. Of course there were custodians, but mainly there were locals and tourists. Many tabaxi, aarakocra and elves. But, there were also many strong-looking orcs. To me it looked like they had peak sculpted physiques rather than peak function physiques - nevertheless this was impressive. D’Avalon is proving to be really good so far. I’m liking it!

“Sir. Could you not touch the programme wheels, please.” A concerned scholarly-type said this to my new comrade, Sterling, who had separated from the group to investigate the many discs against one of the walls. Comrade Sterling was most adamant to continue examining the giant device, much like he was doing to the portal back in Daring Heights. It seemed strange at one point when Sterling was telling off the scholar about an object that didn’t belong to him.

I walked over and suggested, “Comrade Sterling. If we go see Lady Dahlia, maybe she will introduce us to someone who can explain to you the functioning of these discs.”

“Yes. Probably right”, my investigative ally replied. And the mention of Lady Dahlia interested the scholar. He left us to inform Lady Dahlia of our arrival.


Lady Dahlia, Mistress of the Towers

Lady Dahlia was a tall elf with platinum hair and alabaster skin. She explained in more detail the situation. Random globes of magic were penetrating the magical shield that the cathedral provides. These globes would arrive especially after midnight.

Some cloaked figures have been seen going into the bubbles and celebrating them. The effects on the locals who go in, were varied. Never fatal, or even injurious, and never lasting for more than an hour. But, very varied - people go in, potted plants and sheep come out, and then revert back to their humanoid race later. We were tasked, with a reward of 75gp each, to discover the cause of the random bubbles.

Since the likeliest time we would find a globe in the city was midnight, we actually had several hours to pass before we had to be active. Lady Dahlia had put us up at a bed and breakfast, Madame Miriam’s Roost, and in the downtime we had, we decided to be proactive.


Madame Miriam’s Roost and the City

The Roost was a very short walk away from the Cathedral. It was run by a mother aarocokra and her young boys. Hummingbird aarocokras from the looks of it. There were ornamental skulls and axes around the place. This was interesting. I hadn’t seen decorations like this in any other tavern I’ve stayed in. Another point for the city of D’Avalon, I thought.

The boys were very helpful and fascinated by adventurers. They told us what the most popular tavern was, Steins, and we headed there to see if anyone could give us more information on the bubbles. Ragtag sent Ragtail up to circle the cathedral and keep his eyes open for a wild bubble.


Steins

Opposite the cathedral was Steins. Inside we had a drink and failed to learn anything concrete about the magical bubbles. Kelne did, however, use their magic to repair some floorboards upstairs for the tavern’s owner.


Back at the Cathedral

We passed the time by going back to the Cathedral.

Gerhard tried to use his magical Incandescent Apple to locate one of the magical globes. Mr. Penrosa gave me and Gerhard (and the other adventurers at the time) one of these apples each for completing the task he set us. The apple unfortunately did not work. Did Gerhard use it wrongly? Are you supposed to eat it first before it reveals the right direction? I did not feel I would have more success with my own apple, so I kept it stowed.

Sterling made his homunculus metal hawk join Ragtail in surveillance duty.


Closer to Midnight

D’Avalon has a great magical defense to it, which is maintained by the Cathedral. However, this city-wide, magical shield comes at the expense of the cathedral ringing every hour. How do people get adequate sleep around here?

Ragtag and Sterling inform us that their familiars have spotted three giant bolts of energy shooting towards the city’s arcane defense. Two collapse against the strength of the magical city shield. But one penetrates and creates a dome of magical energy around 120ft in diameter, in the city near to Madame Miriam’s. It was time for us to get to work.


The Dome

We had put the familiars to good work, but in retrospect, it’s not like we could have missed this kaleidoscopic dome of magical energy. It was gigantic and very close to us. We saw some masked and cloaked figures delightfully walk into the globe and disappear.

We take some time to decide how to proceed. Cautionate of the dangers that could come from inside. Eventually we just decided to all go in together.

Up until now I have been very impressed with magic and it’s utility - I would be more impressed if its users looked like they had a respectable bench - but in fairness my comrade magic-users have never failed to impress me with their magical talent, even though most of their conditioning is, I will say, unenviable.

But, today, I witnessed quite a different display of magic.

We walked through the globe, and I should never have been concerned with what could have happened. Each of us experienced an equally useless transformation. One of us began to glow, another’s arm movement became blurry, and I had a new eye on my forehead - if I needed to headbutt someone, this eye was going to be a problem. But otherwise, is this dome the place where useless magic comes to die? I have never been happier to have invested my time in my physical conditioning rather than magic.

Amongst all this silly magic, there was something interesting - the cloaked individuals who seemed religiously overjoyed with the appearance of the magical globe, were not affected by the crazy magic like we were.


Suspicious Cloaked and Masked Persons

We approached the two cloaked figures we could see with caution. They were spewing nonsense about some person and their gift whilst dancing around gleefully. Were they intoxicated?

Vox was the nearest to one of the two unknowns. She approached the cloaked figure to talk. The person began casting magic. A multi-coloured chaotic burst of energy flowed towards Vox, and a bouquet of flowers hit Vox in the chest… I don’t know if I would be less impressed if this was definitely meant as offense, or if this was a joke. Seeing this, Ragtag reached for a wand he carried and cast magic to entangle and subdue the individual.

Sterling managed to cover the now subdued person with water using a device he had. Good. Maybe the soaking would sober up the strange person.

Gerhard had his bow ready, but the second of the cloaked figures rushed him with… a hug?

I was near Gerhard at the time, and saw him age a decade in a blink of an eye as more of this multi-coloured magic moved through the hugger’s body into Gerhard. This was serious now. I broke the individual’s grip on Gerhard with my own. Now both suspicious cloaked people were subdued - one by spell, one by my arm.

Kelne asked my captive, “Who is this person you are talking about and did they make the bubbles?” My captive was not concerned with his current restraint, and whilst trying to break my grip and reinitiate a hug, he joyfully explained that they prayed for this wild magic.

With my arm holding captive two, I turned around to see how Vox was doing with captive number one.

Comrade Vox helped her captive out of the magical entanglement and got him to remove his mask. He was a Drow. Gerhard then looked closely at the robes of our captive, and now realised these people were worshippers of a Drow god of chaos and wild magic, Malek.

Unmasked, but more importantly, unentangled, captive number one took advantage of the situation and unleashed wild magic on all of us. Gerhard and Ragtag were now tied to each other with silver thread. Kelne were glowing with different colours. None of us appeared hurt, but weird as this was, the situation had escalated.

A third suspicious individual appeared down an alleyway. Where had this person been hiding? Ragtag had enough of this uninvited wild magic, and before the new figure could add to the chaotic magic going on near us, Ragtag blasted the new unknown from a distance with a couple of his Eldritch blasts. The unknown dropped to the floor, motionless.

Ragtail attacked the person who just unleashed wild magic on all of us, stinging him with his tail that generated poison. Sterling threw his hammer at the man, hitting him in the abdomen. Upon impact, the hammer disappeared and reappeared in Sterling’s hand. Captive one was in bad shape. Not as bad as the third person, but close.

At that moment, my huggy captive put a hand on the arm of mine that held him and channeled wild magic into me. My skin turned translucent I could see my muscles - which was to be fair, impressive. My muscles, that is, not the magic that enabled me to see my muscle fibres. No. wild magic is lame, but more salient right now, wild magic is; unchecked and being used against us.

Kelne tried to mentally subdue my captive, only to find them self inflating like a balloon. Nevertheless, Kelne’s magic worked! My captive was no longer trying to force his hugs on my allies. Now he was under Kelne’s magical influence. So, I let him go and went to help re-subdue the first cloaked drow.

Vox was still trying to reason with the drow that we now surrounded with Ragtail. Her words had finally gotten through to the man. Well, her words and his dead comrade, and the potential that he could die soon. In addition to this, two other cloaked individuals who were making their way towards us, had decided to turn around, and run away.


Motivation Communicated

It was sad, really. These idiots, it appeared they meant no harm with the globes of their god’s wild magic. But, they mistakenly chose to simply impose their ‘gifts’, as they put it, on the city and citizens of D’Avalon, without announcing what they were doing, or asking permission. Perhaps we should have done more on our side to understand the situation, but unfortunately the situation was confusing. I personally cannot fault Ragtag for using deadly magic against an unknown, and possible assailant. I just regret I couldn’t get to that drow first and simply slap him in the face. Kelne used their magic to heal the first drow of his injuries. The second captive was mostly unharmed.

Exiting the bubble, my skin turned back to normal and the other wild magic effects went away at the same time.

We took the remaining two captives back to Lady Dahlia. It was up to her what would happen to these cloaked drows and their unpermitted use of magic in the city.

I had some concerns on whether Lady Dahlia would approve of what happened during the mission, but she seemed pleased and rewarded us with 100gp each rather than the agreed 75gp.


Rest

After our debriefing with Lady Dahlia, we went back to Madame Miriam’s. Miriam herself had waited up for us. It turns out she was a former adventurer - this explains the skulls and axes in her place of stay. We told her everything that happened.

The next morning, we teleported back to Daring Plaza and said our goodbyes.

D’Avalon. It had its pros and cons. Good, strong buildings. Some seemingly well conditioned people. But, I was not a fan of the hourly racket from the Cathedral. And it is where I witnessed the least impressive displays of magic.


Back to Woodcarving

Back at my woodcarving lessons, I was finishing off my lessons on carving bowls. Upside down the bowls reminded me of the wild magic globes. I told my instructor, Morgana, about the adventure in D’Avalon and the least impressive and quite bothersome displays of magic I had seen inside the wild magic dome. Morgana sympathised with me.

Upon putting the finishing touches to my last bowl, Morgana congratulated me on my progress and introduced me to the next object I had to learn to carve, that would test my finer carving skills… masks. Well. There will be no forgetting the D’Avalon adventure any time soon.