Session 13: 9/16/2023
The portal we went through was to an entirely different planet: Castrovel. It is a lush green and a vibrant jungle here. If Hiera didn’t know that we were actually on another planet, we would have thought we were in another planet. Ria faints at the news and won’t wake, but she is breathing and okay. We put together a stretcher to carry Ria. We also fashion together something to clear the underbrush as we walk.
Hiera knows that it’s incredibly warm here and that it doesn’t seem to be right, and Hiera realizes we are actually on Castrovel, the neighbor of Golarion. Castrovel is the second planet from the sun while Golarion is the third. We don’t have spaceship as travel but if we find elves they may be able to teleport us back home.
We walk and find a cliff with a few things: brilliant purple ropes connecting to some pyramids, tiny dots (vessels) that travel along these Iines to create a circuit above the canopy. There are also jagged mountains in the distance. Killian notices the tiny dots are large platforms suspended from the lines as gondolas, carrying supplies to the pyramids and returning empty. The pyramids are probably 40 miles away. Much nearer, where the gondolas are starting, is maybe 5 miles away. We all get ready to head toward the gondolas, but an elf runs out of the woods.
An elven woman runs out of the forest and is darker-skinned with white hair and pale eyes. She has ritual scarring for Zon’kutan (god of darkness, envy, loss, pain) on her chin and lower lip. Brother to Shellac, god of beauty, love, and music — something happened to Zon’kutan in the great beyond and he was this.
Opal and Valentine greet the stranger who came out of the forest. Killian stares at her for a while and then bluntly asks if there are other cultists around and if this would turn into a fight, and the stranger reassures that she is far away from her past. Her name is Yuna now, and we do not have to worry about her. We give her some rations because she looks so rough and we take some time to rest and eat.
Loskialua — THE FRENCH UGH, but they’re astronomers so I guess they’re vaguely redeemable
Opal asks Yuna about the gondolas. Opal explains that that he has no money from here and he’s not willing to use his body (yet) to get things. Yuna knows that the gondolas are used by the settlement to move things and people around. The gondolas are typically set up before anything else. Yuna hasn’t actually been to the city.
We head out and Killian finds a path on the ground and we manage to follow it and find a way through the undergrowth to have an easy walk. It’s easy going as we move forward. We make it to a rushing river in the jungle, water red like blood. There are boulders close enough to hop across, but Valentine is concerned with getting Ria across the river. We all look at the red water and know that it’s just high in iron content. Here are a lot of tracks on the rocks, including humanoids wearing shoes. We manage to get across the river.
As a group we talk about dying in the river and about what constitutes as good or bad at dying and Yuna feels if you keep getting revived then you are pretty bad at dying, actually.
Ultimately, Killian mentions that sometimes when you die you come back as something else and the party realizes that Killian’s died before and he wasn’t just a poppet because he wanted to be one.