Graduation: The Illusion of Control - 09/04/2024 - Kavel

Wizard Man in High Demand

When we arrived at Root Penrosa and my comrade Glint’s house in Port Ffirst, there was time for me to pet the plant dogs, before the rest of the assembled adventurers arrived. My human sister, Sorrel - the badass archer-assassin - was there. Sorrel arrived with me. Velania, our aasimar cleric friend, and Lieutenant Derthaad, our dragonborn sorcerer friend also joined us on our journey from Daring Heights. Comrade Amble, the gnome enchanter, and Glint’s fellow wizard friend, arrived from Fort Ettin.

My diplomacy-magic trained friend, Glint had asked for our help with a few matters that had fallen onto his plate, and were each frankly too big for one person to chew alone. Glint showed and read out the three letters. Each one about some urgent matter.

From Daring Academy - three researchers had gone missing on assignment in Galavir. They had been missing for some time researching a magical illusion based artefact, and Glint is an expert in both diplomacy and illusion magic, so the Academy naturally reached out to him for this matter. The letter also said that if Glint helped the Academy, it would help them better consider his reinstatement back to his old academy post.
So, apparently Glint had been dismissed from the Academy. I did not know this.

From Cheremy Quickknee - who was a member of The Pebbles, a gang of swindlers, from where Glint grew up. Cheremy needed help bringing the organisation down. Glint was a former member. This was a second piece of information I learned about Glint; I had no idea he was a former criminal. Glint being thrown out of Daring Academy now made more sense to me. Also, Cheremy’s letter stated he would be arriving by ship at port Ffirst the very same evening that Glint was reading this second letter to us.

From Glint’s Parents - written by his father. This letter was about some family matters to do with arranged marriages that are common in Glint’s ancestry, which his parents wished to put an end to. They too, as was common amongst all these letters, were asking for Glint’s assistance.
To be honest, I was surprised that Glint read this third letter to us; what did it have to do with us adventurers? Sure we are all friends and comrades. But, the first two letters had clear adventuring tasks in them; rescue and assault. This third letter just seemed to be about a family dinner and a talk.

These were the three letters. At the time, it seemed like maybe we could delay the Academy task for a day, and handle Cheremy’s request in the evening - and also leave Glint to his family matters himself. However, we felt a sense of urgency about all the letters when Glint mentioned that all three letters arrived together. Postmaster Wendy told Glint that it was as if someone were messing with his mail.

Now comrades, you can’t make this stuff up - Root then had a request about gathering soil from a place in the Plane of Fire for some special plants that was also immediately urgent. I will emply a food based metaphor here: Glint now had three giant-sized steaks urgently requiring attention on his tea-cup sized, little Glint plate. The parent steak was at least only nearby and not quite on Glint’s plate.

But, again comrades; you can’t make this stuff up - then there was a knock on the door. It was Glint’s parents! So, this meant Glint had all four of the steaks stacked in a tower on his tea-cup sized plate. I tried to help by making a ‘no more visitors today’ sign and placing it in front of the front door.

Whilst we were all talking about how we might manage to handle all of the metaphorical steaks in the short time we had, I wrote Glint a letter myself, and gave it to him. But, Glint was quite startled by receiving yet another letter and burned it with his fire magic. It was perhaps partially my fault, when I gave it to him saying, “another letter came in the mail for you,” instead of just telling him I wrote it then and there. I had to explain to him that it said, “Stay strong!” and that I signed it, and it was meant as encouragement. I repeated the words ‘stay strong’ as I slapped his shoulder to show him my support.

Glint staggered into the wall as a result of my physical-based encouragement. This tells me that Glint has terrible posture, the slap was a tiny application of force, it should not have carried him into the wall. Glint needs to plant his feet into the ground better when he stands up.


To The Plane of Fire To Get Some Soil

My magic-user friends brought up the fact that many of them can all teleport, and Derthaad can even cast the Planeshift spell. So, it was looking likely that with efficient adventuring we could in fact help Glint eat his metaphorical tower of steaks.

Root warned us about fire giants in the location where we’d need to get the soil - I didn’t see the problem there. But, my magic-user comrades decided it would be best to employ a team invisibility strategy combined with the Pass Without a Trace spell.

In short order, we snuck into the entrance to a mountain city, found someone’s allotment and helped ourselves to a sack of soil, and then planeshifted - not to Root - but to Galavir.

The Plane of Fire was a whole day’s adventure compacted into an hour expertly achieved through high level magic and veteran adventuring experience. There was disappointingly little credit to be given to the importance of strength and conditioning, though I carried the sack of soil for Glint. A heavy sack is not easy to carry around, but one can endure if one's strength and conditioning is maintained - mine are titanic.


To Galavir to Help with Some Junior Wizards

There was talk about staying invisible throughout our time in Galavir. But I put down this idea. Comrade Derthaad and I are hockey champions in Galavir, and the people do not get to see us often - it would be a nice treat for them.

We greeted many hockey fans on the way to our task.

An elf called Vera directed us to a building where the junior research wizards had taken her illusion and enchantment orb-like artefact into a building. This orb, it turns out, is normally outside the building, and casts powerful illusions inside of the building. However, as we now know, if the orb is inside the building, both the illusion and enchantment powers become active in the same location, which means if you are within the building experiencing the illusions; you may also become enchanted by the illusions too, and believe you belong within the pretend realm being shown.

Amble cast a protective mind spell on Glint, Velania, Sorrel and I, before we entered the building. I was very appreciative of this, as I hate psychic magic nonsense. Derthaad and Amble stayed outside as a safety measure, but brought their familiars; Steve (a gecko) and Owl (an Owl) into the building with us.

The building was fairly large at around fifty to sixty feet square. It certainly wasn’t as large as the castle and surrounding area that we saw inside the building would suggest. It was a very powerful illusion indeed, but thanks to Amble’s magic, we could see the reality within the illusion. Velania was able to locate the three wizards we needed to extract from the building, she did this with a True Seeing spell. All three wizards were enchanted by the orbs' magic and believed they had a role within the defending castle’s army against the hostile invaders. We managed to convince two of them to exit the building with trickery, where outside Amble calmed them and Derthaad dispelled the mind magic they were affected by. Velania was the tricky expert; she adjusted her counselling skills to be a little deceptive when telling the wizards they needed to ‘leave the castle’. But for one wizard the trickery was not working. To be fair, this was because I was attempting the trickery. When the trickery failed, I switched to a different tactic; I picked that wizard up and carried her out of the building, which was easy for me because of my titan-level of strength.

Wizards and orb gained; Galavir job completed. Also within an hour! As a team of adventurers, we were really demonstrating our veteran expertise.


Back to Port Ffirst for a Pit Stop

Root was happy to receive the soil from the Plane of Fire. We were worried about when the parents wanted to do the blood ritual, but they said it could wait until later in the evening if we wanted to meet Chermey Quickknee at the docks.

I should stop to explain that Glint’s parents had a blood ritual in mind that would bond all three of them in a way that wouldn’t allow any of them to be banished, with the Banishment spell, back to their home plane, if they all happen to be on the Material Plane at the same time. In a way Glint and his parents would become unbanishable. This would prove useful in dealing with Glint’s grandparents who maintain a historically assigned marriage practice in the family that involves summoning magic. The parents wish to stop this custom. But the grandparents can cast the banishment spell, making it tricky for the parents to interact with the grandparents. So, hence the ritual.
Other people’s families are very different. There are no arranged marriages or blood rituals in my family.

On the way to the docks, I gave Glint another letter. This time Glint did not preemptively burn it. It was very similar to the letter Glint did burn, which is to say that the letter had a message from me to ‘Stay strong!’ signed by me. But, I also included a stamped discount mark for Thicc Boi gym membership and physiotherapy; so Glint can work on his posture.


To the Docks to Help Cheremy Quickknee Bring Down a Gang of Swindlers

We saw Cheremy disembark from a ship called ‘The Deck of Many Things’. I liked the name of this ship. Very clever.

The ship’s captain was watching Cheremy as he walked along the dock. Sorrel, because her observation skills are near-omniscient, spotted a couple of assassins on nearby rooftops. Sorrel, because she is a badass assassin herself, was able to disappear from sight and join the rooftop assassins without being seen. The others spread out to give Glint room to speak to Cheremy alone. I stuck around as protection, which was good for when Girt Cobblestone, leader of The Pebbles, magically appeared and was coming after Cheremy with two flanking assassins along with the rooftop pair.

I charged at one of the flanking assassins and clotheslined him into the floor. I then followed up with an elbow drop crushing the man’s chest, and then I slapped his skull, clanging it into the dock-floor, before picking up a magic scroll that Girt Cobblestone dropped in fear. Amble later took possession of the scroll. It is a scroll of Teleportation, which Girt Cobblestone was going to use to flee when he realised his side was terribly under powered against us.

It had been some time, I gathered, since Girt had seen the escapee Glint. Glint had become a much more powerful wizard since his days with The Pebbles. There was too much for The Pebbles to handle: Sorrel’s lightning fast arrows, Amble’s twinned Psychic Lance spells, Velania’s immense Guiding Bolt, my titan-level wrestling; it was all too much for Girt Cobblestone, a big gangsta fish in a tiny pond, metaphorically speaking. This was Kantas, and we are top-tier adventurers; we’re king sharks. Also, Derthaad became his big blue dragon form, which if you haven’t seen it before must be very terrifying. In addition, Glint performed a combination of high level illusion magic and diplomacy magic, and convinced Girt Cobblestone to surrender.

I wouldn’t want to seem a show-off, but my comrades and I completed three adventures in one day, and I reckon we had time for one more. But, there were no adventures left to solve. There was only a family blood ritual and dinner.


Family Blood Ritual

My magical comrades helped with the blood ritual. I had nothing to offer in the way of magic, so during the time of the preparation, I instead helped Root with; the soil from the Plane of Fire, some heavy lifting, and I played with the plant dogs.

There was a knock on the door. Velania observed that my sign had been taken down! It was the captain of The Deck of Many Things. The captain was the leader of a group known as Gravity. This name sounded like a male stage performing group to me. They wanted to recruit Glint. They were responsible for Glint’s delayed mail; it was a test! Gravity were impressed with Glint, and were interested in him joining them on their mission to, effectively, steal back what some misbehaving wealthy groups have stolen from their citizens, and give that wealth back to the citizens. Glint is interested in joining.

The blood ritual was nice.

Glint’s mum helped Glint with his cursed spellbook - it was this book that explained all the weird wild magic shenanigans that had been happening around Glint from time to time. For example, during the wedding Sorrel hosted in Fort Ettin and Glint casted a very nice garden-space illusion in the multi-faith chapel, but also put illusionary daggers in everyone’s chest.

Glint had a Potion of Longevity on him - he’s had this for some time. Archie was very jealous when I told him. I gave him the empty bottle. There appeared to be droplets in there that maybe Archie could study, but I am not confident.

I’ve invited Velania and Sorrel to come dine with me and Nathalie sometime in my house. Velania has invited us to visit her and An’Akrim, who seems to be doing well and appears to have adapted to having a soul after a very long time of not having one.

Root let me take some exotic pot plants for my home and to give to Nathalie in the Feywild. These are nice plants.

I learned from Archie later that Glint has been reinstated as a professor at Daring Academy. Archie has made no progress with Glint’s empty Potion of Longevity bottle.