Feb 10, 2025

Fight! The tieflings were strong, skillful warriors, knocking party members (mostly Six) to the ground with shield bashes and then stabbing them with their spears. Umbra, Botticelli, and Mario attempted to stun and knock prone the warriors with mixed results, Six (when he was on his feet) smited them, Fulton shot arrows and inspired everyone with his dance, and Harvey experimented with new spells like Witchbolt. 

The tieflings hit the party hard right off the bat, but the party recovered and wore them down. After a couple rounds, the tide began turning and one of the tieflings yelled up the ladder asking for help. Shortly after, the party noticed the ladder begin jostling a bit, as though something was climbing.

After the first tiefling went down (and Umbra nearly did), a pair of Mezzoloths with tridents stormed down the ladder and joined the fray, teleporting around the battlefield. The remaining tiefling, very low on health, shouted for help to Thlaarshk. A deep voice from behind one of the closed doors responded “Fine, fine. Just a second.” Fulton attempted to jam the door shut with a crowbar and also tried to hold it shut.

A powerful form forced the door open, sending Fulton tumbling. It was a huge Nycaloth with a giant battle axe! Fulton luckily incapacitated it with Tasha’s Hideous Laughter as it cheerfully joked about eating the party.

The remaining tiefling fell, along with one of the Mezzoloths. The remaining one pulled out its big guns and cast Cloudkill, knocking down half of the already battered party. Only Six, Harvey and Mario remained standing and the Nycaloth shrugged off the laughter. Uh oh.

It was hard to hit the remaining Mezzoloth, but Six’s smites were able to break its concentration on the Cloudkill before it finished off the unconscious characters (who all did very well on their death saves and stabilized on their own) but then he went down as well. Mario tried tanking both the Nycaloth and the Mezzoloth at the same time, but it was well above his plumber training. He went down too, but the Mezzoloth was on its last legs. Harvey finally finished off the remaining Mezzoloth and wounded the Nycaloth, then fled through a door into a supply closet.

The Nycaloth ignored the fleeing rabbit, deeming him a non-threat, and began coup de grace’ing the party members and preparing them for dinner. Harvey used his turns to pop out of the closet, cast a spell, and pop back in. But as long as the Nycaloth made its saves it ignored him. Finally, after finishing off 2-3 party members, Thlaarshk failed its save against a Sleep spell and was halted for a round. Unfortunately, it made the follow-up save and decided it had had enough of Harvey. It burst down the closet door and hacked him to bits, then finished killing the party. TPK!

A minute or two later, alternate versions of the entire party suddenly reappeared around Harvey’s body in the now very cramped supply closet. It was the original Solara and Sandro who died in the Mortuary cremation hallway, plus new versions of everyone else. No one knew how they got there, with Solara and Sandro’s last memories being dying in the hallway, though everyone had a vague memory of hunting for a modron named RO4M. Solara and Sandro also vaguely thought that Shemeshkuh seemed familiar somehow.

The newly formed and revitalized party burst through the closet door and dispatched the wounded and confused Nycaloth which had just started snacking on the still-warm bodies of the last party. Victory!

Exploring the level, the party discovered a bunch of bedrooms, along with a study full of notes and maps of the planes. Additionally, a strange humanoid skull apparently made out of colored glass and various metals rested on the desk. The party took it, just in case.

Exploring up the ladder, the party found a terrified gnome wizard named Ferd’no apparently hiding from the Yugoloths. He thanked the party for saving him and asked if the monsters were all dead. He accompanied the party for a bit, but once he knew the coast was clear, he fled down the ladder and out of the tower.

The room Ferd’no was hiding in had a strange crude humanoid statue leaning over a round stone table. The party examined it but found no secret doors or any way to activate it. The ladder up was blocked with a bolted hatch, which the party opened. On the top floor was a small pillar in the middle of the room with a large gemstone mounted on top. Sitting peacefully in the corner was an elderly githzerai woman.

The party chatted with her a bit (I forget her name) and in very meditative, Zen-like fashion she thanked the party for saving the tower. It was an ancient githzerai outpost for meditation and research, though she had only been its custodian for the last couple centuries. “The Castellan”, whatever that was, was the tower’s “heart” somehow.

She led the party down to the crude statue, implied to the party that the hiding gnome wizard had actually been a shape-changed incubus (it was trying, successfully, to escape being slain by the party), and spoke a command word in Gith to the statue. The statue animated, waved its hands over the table, and a detailed map of the Outlands appeared. 

After some discussion, she mentioned a modron having visited a while back intent on rejoining its branch of the Great Modron March. It had a mimir (a humanoid skull-shaped recording device) it was using to find its branch of The March. The modron found what it was looking for and departed months ago, but left the mimir (apparently the skull the party was carrying). The mimir had been damaged in the Yugoloth attack and wasn’t working. 

A couple members of the party with good Arcana scores worked together and successfully repaired the skull, only to find the damage had knocked out its memories of several of the gate-towns. To retrieve where the modron ultimately went, the party needed to visit seven of the gate towns, bring the skull to within 20’ or so of each gate, and then spend a few minutes describing in detail the gate and the area immediately around it.

The Outlands are the plane of True Neutral and infinitely large, but they’re also a disc with the Spire in the middle, and the outer edge studded with a succession of towns. Each town is built around a permanent gate portal leading to an outer plane, and each town takes on some of the personality of the town to which its connected. Rarely, if a town’s personality becomes too much like the outer plane to which its connected, it will “fall” into that plane and become part of Carceri or the Beastlands or whatever its connected to, and a new town will gradually be built in the Outlands.

The missing seven towns were: 

• Automata (leads to Mechanus, the plane of Lawful Neutral and where the Great Modron March stats) 

• Curst (leads to Carceri, the prison plane between Chaotic Evil and Neutral Evil)

• Excelsior (leads to Mount Celestia aka the Seven Heavens, the plane of Lawful Good) 

• Faunel (leads to The Beastlands, the Happy Hunting Grounds between Neutral Good and Chaotic Good)

• Glorium (leads to Ysgard, between the planes of Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral)

• Rigus (leads to the infinite battle plane of Archeron, between Lawful Evil and Lawful Neutral)

• Sylvania (leads to the Olympian Plane of Arboria, sometimes called Olympus, the plane of Chaotic Good).

Following the modron’s trail through the seven gate towns seemed like the next step, so the party began discussing which town to visit first. The Githzerai woman noted that since she and the tower (which was called Iedcaru) owed the party for freeing them from the Yugoloths, the least they could do was give the party a ride. Plus, she was an expert on the planes and had visited each town more than once, so she could probably give them some advice.

She spoke another command word to the Castellan, and the tower also rocked heavily for several seconds while the party felt crushed to the floor. The odd, apparently collapsed pillars around the outside of the tower had actually been its legs. The tower had just now *stood up*. It was a walking tower.

“Where do you want to go first?” she asked.