Feb 17, 2025

The party opted to start with Sylvania and the marching tower Iedcaru started heading in that direction. The Githzerai scholar explained the tower moved at exactly 12 mph, no faster or slower, but the distance between places in Outland often shifted. It might take a few weeks to reach an apparently distant location and then a decade to go somewhere seemingly closer. As with the outer planes, time sometimes had a mind of its own.

In good news, she explained, since marching towers were often used by bandits or as weapons of war, they were unlikely to be attacked en route. Plus, the legs were ~50’ long and 12 mph (a 5 minute mile), was pretty fast. If they were going to be attacked, it would probably happen when they stopped and attacks while marching were extremely rare.

As if on cue, there was suddenly a loud crunching sound and the tower sagged and seemed to struggle slightly, as if something large and heavy had just landed on it. The party sprinted up the stairs to the lighthouse floor and looked out the windows, to see a large, pearl-colored dragon wrapped around the top of the tower, looking back in the windows at them.

“Pleasure to see you again, old friends!” the dragon bellowed. “Its been centuries, has it not?” The dragon chuckled at the party’s confusion. “Sorry, sorry, it has been centuries for *me*, but you haven’t met me yet at this point, have you? Well, then. I can’t tell you anything without changing things, but how do I… Ah, yes, I see.” The dragon produced a small metal amulet from a pouch by one of its wings and handed it to the party. “Please give this to the one who ‘Sees in silver’. Alright?” It then flew away, chuckling at the party’s questions of “Wait, what?”

After a few weeks of increasingly monotonous travel, the party arrived at Sylvania, an elven town woven into the surrounding forest. A large party seemed to be underway. The tower stopped and the party headed into the town, looking for the gate.

Elves, dryads, pixes and other creatures were in the midst of a town-wide party, though the party occasionally heard a loud thunder-like crash. A satyr, who the party somehow knew was possessed by a spirit named Danai, one of the rulers of the town, greeted the party and asked them their business in Sylvania. The party said they’d come for the party, and Danai welcomed them but asked a favor. 

An Empyrean name Kopoha, a not-yet grown child of the gods, immature yet very powerful, was trying to get into an invite-only party hosted by the Elven god of Nature. She wasn’t on the guest list, and it was an issue. If the party could keep her out of trouble, Danai would get the party into the party afterwards.

The party talked the 18’ tall, immensely powerful proto-deity into joining a dryad dance performance instead and managed to avoid her crushing any dryads accidentally. Then a pixie brewfest beckoned and the party got into a drinking contest with her (which she won pretty easily). Finally, the party played bocce using skeleton skulls against retired god of the dead Jergal and minions. The Empyrean lost badly, overthrowing the mark failing to rein in her enormous strength, but the party cajoled her into losing gracefully.

Along the way, she shared that growing up with the expectation of becoming a god was a lot of pressure. She felt like she had to be great at everything all the time, and her sister was better than her at a lot of the things she valued, making it even harder. Finally, the combination of permanence and uncertainty was weighing on her. Because when you became a god, you were immortal. Your portfolio, barring something weird, was yours forever. She loved sailing and was great at it, but she hated seafood. If she became a god of the sea, she’d be around seafood *forever*.

Four, being the minor-est of minor gods himself, gave her some perspective. It was possible to be the god of extremely minor things and *still be a god* so there was no need to have her expectations so high. Plus, the powers-that-be wouldn’t really pick something she was bad at, or didn’t like, and make her the god of that. Feeling a little better, she decided to go have a talk with her sister and headed north from Sylvania. 

Danai found the party, expressed their appreciation, and got them into the party. Rillifane Rallathil, elven god of nature, was tending bar at a gigantic rave in a huge tent and made everyone by far the best cocktail they’d ever had. Everyone’s drink not only tasted amazing but also brought out the best aspects of the person who drank it, and everyone received a +1 to a stat of their choice (can go over 20).

The next morning, the party woke up in the tent feeling only slightly hungover. They found Danai, and asked where the gate was having not seen it at all the day before. Apparently the gate is in the forest outside of town but drifts around. It was north of town the day before but was now east, in an old well. Danai took the party there, and someone… (Botticelli, maybe? I forget.) described the gate and Sylvania to the mimir in positive, glowing terms.

Back to the tower, and onto the next town over, Faunel. Faunel was mostly inhabited by awakened animals of various sorts, and was mostly in shambles, having recently fallen into The Beastlands. Where the party expected Faunel to be was merely a half-dozen huts, a neutral trade-ground between the feuding animal groups contending over how the new Faunel would be run.

Harvey got a large sack of root vegetables (which was most of what the tower had left for food) to trade to the animals. Razzak, very slow-speaking three-toed sloth (that gimmick got old fast) cheerfully traded various sorts of smoked meat and other food for the root vegetables, and explained the animals were split into four groups. The herbivores, the carnivores, and the flyers were the three main groups, and then a small splinter faction where here in the middle trying to keep things from breaking into open conflict. The party decided to meet with the leader of the herbivores, and Razzak provided directions to their base a few miles away.

The terrain was wild and variable even for the Outlands. Whereas Sylvania was surrounded by thick arboreal forests for dozens of miles in every direction, the land around Faunel changed constantly. It’d be swamp for a mile or two, then a desert for a mile, then icy tundra for a couple miles, then pine forest, etc. 

While going through a forested area, the party saw a pack of six gnolls eating a large bird on the path ahead. First battle using entirely 5.24 rules and stat blocks! Fight!

The gnolls had whips and javelins made of bone, and occasionally drove each other in savage frenzies giving them extra attacks. Solara cast spirit guardians and ran very quickly around the outside of the pack hitting lots of gnolls, Harvey zapped the gnolls with spells, Four tanked, and Botticelli skirmished from the trees. In response, the gnolls rolled lots of natural 20s. Both sides whittled each other down and everyone was in tatters by the end. 

Fortunately for the party, because none of them were actually dead yet and the rules said the gnolls would break and run when four of them died. It could easily have still gone either way at that point. The remaining gnolls fled, and the party gathered everyone together, mended their wounds, and took a short rest as we finished the session.