Having returned from the City of Brass, the Party got back to work on the whole… kill the Royals business.

After securing their passes for the upper tiers, and some consultation with Bailiff – turns out the Dragonborn eggs have begun to wobble, so they need to get fishing right away – Cranzalar, Vi, and Firuzeh made their way upwards.

They secured disguises from a bunch of weirdoes, and then flew upwards on their brand spanking new Carpet of Flying.

Landing on a plateau atop a tower used for displays of Royal magic, they found themselves privy to a broadcast of sorts being sent out by Mavi, assuring citizens of Floodwall that they were shoring up the city’s defense against the tide.

Uzi Detected Magic as he cast whatever it was, and learned that Mavi was using enchantments on the populace for presumably nefarious purposes.

‘We need to put a stop to this,’ said Cranzalar.

‘Sure no problem,’ said Uzi, and conjured up a tidal wave to sweep the Royal and his guards from the tower. Those that managed to survive the water didn’t survive the Cranzalar that followed.

Death didn’t take on Mavi, of course, and the Party made a hasty getaway on the carpet, only to crashland atop a mansion on the Privilieged Tier. Like IDIOTS.

(We got to do this one in-person, in a gaming café in Watford! It was great!)

The party made a deal with Shallows: they’d head into the City of Brass, across the Sea of Flame, to steal a magical book known as ‘the Archive’ from the Absolute Ruler of the City of Brass, the Grand Sultan of the Efreet, the Lord of FLame, the Potentate Incandescent, the Tempering and Eternal Flame of Truth, the Most Puissant of Hunters, Marshal of the Order of the Fiery Heart, the Smoldering Dictator, the Crimson Firebrand, Marrake al-Sidan al Hariq ben Lazen.

After a discussion with Shallows, an ensorcelled ward against flame, a nice new dress for Firuzeh, and obtaining a Scroll of Foresight, the three set off with Redford in tow. They learned a whole bunch about Floodwall; such as the fact that each Royal specialises in a different school of magic, that the Royals have no influence over the Tide, that the city itself was founded more or less by accident – built up around a massive spire that had been pierced into the ground – and the nature of Oltin’s method of maintaining immortality.

Crossing the Sea of Flame proved arduous – the heat and lack of water meant the party grew exhausted, and this made things even more difficult when – for example – trying to sneak past a massive Fire Elemental. Despite Cranzalar’s thunderous sneezing, the party got by unscathed.

Upon bluffing their way through the city gates – telling the guard that Firuzeh was a visiting dignitary here to discuss trade agreements with the Sultan – the party soon found themselves perusing the wares in the City of Brass’s bustling bazaar. They traded several cursed items for valuable tools – losing the Boots of the Slug, the Leitner Book (The Bone Turner’s Tale), and the Ring of Gluttony, but gaining a Carpet of Flying and a Handy Haversack in return.

Cranzalar also had a small effigy of his God, Eadro, crafted from clay by an artisan in the city. They had coffee while waiting for it to be finished. It was pleasant, and in real life I ate a chilli dog and it was delicious.

It was time to head to the Charcoal Palace, and the Sultan’s personal library inside – leaving Redford in the coffee shop. Firuzeh was able to maintain her regal persona and get all of the Sultan’s titles correct and in the proper order, and so the Sultan offered to take her on a tour of his palace. They went off toward the Library, leaving Cranzalar and Vi with the Grand Vizier.

After noticing a massive brass statue of a Simorgh – a god bird – with scratching marks on its pedestal that indicated it could probably move, Vi told the Vizier she desperately needed the toilet. And that she needed Cranzalar’s help, because it might get messy. And then rolled a Natural Twenty.

The two then hid in the bathroom, making skunk smells and splashing sounds. Cranzalar used his divine powers, his sacred gifts granted unto him by an actual deity to make very, very loud fart noises.

To be fair, it worked perfectly.

While Uzi distracted the Sultan – and got him to try and impress her by showing off the vault he kept the Archive sealed away in – Vi Wild-Shaped into a spider and scuttled into the vault as it was being closed. Inside, she turned into a crab, broke the seal around the book, and set off the alarms.

Uzi prompted the Sultan to check his vault was safe while the alarms blared and the Simorgh in the grand hall awoke, and he opened it to find a crab attach itself to his face and jam its pincers in his eyes. Uzi grabbed the book, and the crab, and caught up with Cranzalar who was preparing the Flying Carpet for a speedy getaway.

As the carpet lifted off, soaring through the hallway towards the now-magically-sealed doors, the book offered to help – but to do so, Firuzeh would have to attune to it. She agreed, and used the Archive’s power to fire a massive Chromatic Orb to blast their way out.

The Simorgh was waiting as they soared past. The Carpet flew upwards, and the great god bird gave chase with a mighty flap of its brass wings. Cranzalar, rolling a Natural Twenty with his prepared slash from the Glass Sword, cleaved a massive wound in the Simorgh’s body (seventy flipping points of damage).

The Simorgh still followed, and as the carpet swooped out of the Charcoal Palace and over the City, it crashed through the front wall, getting closer and closer. Vi – no longer a crab at this point – fired out a huge Moonbeam, disrupting the shapechanging magic inhabiting the Simorgh and changing it back into a regular statue. It crashed down into the city, but probably didn’t kill anyone. Hopefully.

After collecting Redford, the group made their way back to Shallows, who demanded the Archive as part of their deal. Uzi wasn’t willing to give it up, but Shallows cast Hold Person and took it.

The Archive’s voice, in Uzi’s mind, asked her ‘not to freak out at this next bit’. When Shallows tried to read from the book, his mind – which was lacking in arcane protections – was overwhelmed by the knowledge in the book, and he took 92 points of damage and vanished in a blast of light, leaving nothing but a glowing rune on the floor.

Of course, this meant Redford was the new head of Dry Land! Flirtinis all round!!

The party went back through a chalk door to Floodwall, where about 5 minutes had passed. The sound of rain felt a little odd to hear, but was comforting, in a way.

That chilli dog was really good, seriously. A pretzel bun?! Wow.

The plan to take down Lilla was underway!

Having learned some of the details of the Clone spell Lilla uses for her immortality, the party took some downtime while a profile of Lilla’s movements was put together. They realised that Lilla’s backup bod was stashed away somewhere up in the Royal Palace – the seventh tier.

Cranzalar began working on a How to Raise a Dragonborn guide for when the eggs hatch, and Uzi and Vi had some shenanigans with a pigeon and some extremely poisonous berries. And Eadro, a God with an interest in Cranzalar, appeared to him in a dream and told him ‘the Weaver is in your midst,’ which is definitely not ominous or anything.

Deciding they shouldn’t move forward until they were certain they could get to this backup body, the party reached out to Dry Land, and Redford specifically. Cranzalar learned that the reason the Dragonborn eggs were being stored was that Dry Land had been supplying them to the Church.

Redford was in trouble with the Boss of Dry Land because of the egg situation, so attempted to bargain for them back. The eggs have been out of the fridge for too long though! As a compromise, and hopefully to figure out a third option, Redford took the party to meet with Shallows, the aforementioned boss.

Opening up a portal into the Plane of Fire, the party found themselves face to face with the man in charge of Dry Land – a tiefling with metallic, golden skin. He could tell immediately that Uzi was a tiefling too. (Not all tieflings know each other, jeeze)

Cranzalar took all of the eggs found in the Dry Land warehouse back to the Regicider base in the third tier, but didn’t let Redford know what he’d done. The party got their papers and made their way up to the fifth tier for the meeting.

They were stopped at the border by an inquisitor and his apprentice, a Fire Genasi and Blue Dragonborn respectively. The three were able to bluff their way past without getting stabbed or anything.

The meeting of the royals took place as planned, and the party blended in with the crowd. The royals announced that to offset the more frequent coming of the tide, they would be building more tiers atop the city. They were opening a portal to the Elemental Plane of Earth to get the materials to do so.

The meeting was cut short, however, when Lilla noticed the party. To try and get them, and have revenge on Cranzalar killing her, she insta-killed a large part of the crowd and made them into zombies. The party escaped with Firuzeh’s help, as she feather-fell off the edge of the city.

Landing in the third tier, they were pursued by zombies, led by a Death Knight Lilla had raised. They barricaded themselves in an abandoned inn, and fought off waves of undead. The Death Knight had been sent to claim Cranzalar’s bones for Lilla’s collection, but as it was defeated – Vi doing a massive blast of damage with a Moonbeam – the pursuit was thwarted and the party escaped back to Bailiff and the Regicider base.

They decided from there that the first Royal they’d pursue (having successfully completed the spell to track the Royals’ whereabouts) would be Lilla.

Upon their descent into the Dry Land warehouse basement, Cranzalar, Vi, and Uzi encountered several shrines to a whole host of outlawed gods – along with several dedicated to demon lords and archdevils, as well as the Lords & Ladies of the Fey. Cranzalar got a holy symbol of Eadro; a metal shell with a spiral pattern.

After disarming the security measures leading to the vault, the party came across a number of Cultists, and attempted to persuade them to leave – cajoling them with promises of coffee and biscuits, lifting up giant crabs, and declaring that they were the boss now. It seemed to go quite well, but only because of Vi’s first use of the Mask of the Mind Spider. She calmly Suggested that the cultists leave and find those nice biscuits upstairs in the warehouse full of deadly, cursed objects.

The Cult of the Flood was attempting to breach the warehouse vault by burrowing into it with a massive jellyfish that could transmute matter into brine, which was being overseen by a mysterious man with illusory smoke hiding his face and a pair of black antlers. He teleported away, but not before setting the Jellyfish on Cranzalar. An attack from Uzi broke his concentration, dropping his spell and revealing his face – a face Vi recognised as that of her eldest brother.

The Jellyfish proved quite a challenge, surviving massive spells, a hit from a collapsing pillar, and even managing to drop Vi as it turned chunks of her into brine. Cranzalar mustered up the last of his holy power in an act of desperation, and fuckin’ vaporised the thing before healing Vi.

And there was a hole in the wall of the vault. The party decided they should investigate before just leaving, and found that inside were racks upon racks of frozen Dragonborn eggs…

What a T W I S T !

Upon returning to the city, the party took the Spore Druid Refugees down to meet Bailiff in the Regiciders’ base. Cranzalar stuffed them all into the tree, where presumably they did okay on the entry test.

After a stealth failure at the gate to the 4th Tier, the party bluffed their way past a guard with a clever ‘we are fucking nutters’ ruse. Vi and Uzi were presumably too disturbed by Cranzalar’s P A P E R S  voice to ever speak of it again.

Deciding they needed to forge themselves some travel paperwork, they made their way to a pub that doubled as a hub for Dry Land’s smuggling. A familiar face met them: Redford, who’d last been seen sprinting rapidly away from a very bad smell.

Redford offered a trade – he’d procure travel papers for the 2nd tier up to the 5th tier, and sort out some for the 6th, if the party would head to a Dry Land warehouse and clear out the Cult of the Flood that was trying to break into a vault there. The 6th Tier papers could be traded for another favour at a later date.

After a tense moment between Cranzalar and Redford, the party agreed, and set off to the warehouse. They used a pendant belonging to a cult member to get past the guards, and promptly set about ransacking the place themselves.

Cranzalar obtained an as-yet-unnamed longsword made of humming glass, and wisely avoided touching a book named ‘Ex Altoria’.

Uzi got a cursed book entitled ‘The Bone Turner’s Tale’, and a shiny pair of Boots of the Slug.

Vi found a peculiar ring that seems to stave off exhaustion, and a Mask of the Mind Spider that’s now stuck to her face. Both of these items’ more nefarious aspects have yet to make themselves known.

The sound of rushing water was coming from a set of stairs leading into the basement of the warehouse. Cranzalar, Uzi and Vi approached carefully. We cut to NEXT TIME, ON DRAGONBALL Z

Travelling up through the Third Tier to gatecrash the audience being held by the Royals, Cranzalar, Vi, and Uzi got a little lost in the woods after being sidetracked by the appearance of a mysteriously glowing white stag.

Following it, Vi found a sword planted in the earth with a crossguard like antlers. It can change its shape between a blade and a cane.

After an encounter with some giant venomous spiders – in which Cranzalar almost died – the three found they’d been pulled into some other pocket dimension, with dead and dying trees stretching out in all directions.

After a time they found a circle of Druidic types preparing for something called the ‘Green Sun’s Zenith’, a sacred event that would provide all the sustenance they’d need. The circle was led by a man named Castor Bean, who was very very interested in Vi and her connection to the Feywild.

Through smart investigation and interrogation of a Firbolg named Foxglove, the party discovered the truth of things – that Castor had sucked the life from this forest after sequestering the circle away from the rest of Floodwall, and was preparing to use the Green Sun’s Zenith to somehow revitalise the place. Until, of course, Vi arrived: his ticket out and into the Feywild.

Castor Bean had to be stopped, so after a small altercation with a druid aspirant which was solved by Firuzeh drawing upon the examples of poise and gravitas learned from Vi (and her own Tiefling regality), the three tracked him down mid-ritual. Cranzalar put an end to him with an incredibly powerful Inflict Wounds spell which even spread to the spores Castor had created, freeing the would-be-druids from their fate as fungal fertiliser.

Vi used the now-unbound Green Sun’s power to tear open a portal back to Floodwall, and the party emerged close to the gate onto the Fourth Tier…

This time, the party made their way up towards the third tier with Bailiff, sneaking through a gate with a cart they borrowed from some farmer named Brumbpo Tungús. Though things went a little awry, a smart use of the Fog spell got them through.

After reaching the entrance to the Regiciders HQ (a tree enchanted with Druidic magic) the three passed some trials to gain entry – making cool one-liners, solving nightmare-level trivia, and revealing personal secrets to one another about Firuzeh’s possible lack of parents, Vi’s messy hair, and Cranzalar being taken by the church before he hatched.

Bailiff revealed a little bit more about the Royal’s immortality, but when questions were raised about who would run the city if the royals were gone, they didn’t have any clear answers. It was decided that they’d all cross that bridge if it came to it.

The party bunked down for the night in the safehouse. In two days, there would be a meeting of the Royals, and the three decided they should get themselves into the audience for some reconnaissance.

Also, Firuzeh was forcibly bathed. It was terrible.

Lilla’s body crumbled into ash, washed away by the retreating tide.

The party realised they had to get the hell away from the scene of the crime, and after some mild vomiting from Firuzeh, they set out after Verisha’s trail toward the Third tier. After an hour or so of movement, avoiding patrols from Church Guards, Cranzalar decided the group should sort out their wardrobe. He crushed his symbols of the Church, melting them with his breath weapon. Shortly after, an announcement was broadcast to the whole second tier, announcing the identities of three criminals wanted for ‘attempted deicide’.

Looking for better ways to hide their identity, the three found a store that offered assorted bricabrac – but a suspicious Verischa in weasel form followed the shopkeeper into the back room, where he was reporting his customers to the Church. The three were able to slip away beyond the notice of the guards that responded to his call.

The party’s trail led them to a long, flooded stretch of road – swimming through they were attacked by Jellyfish with deadly paralytic stings. Firuzeh took a bad hit and almost fuckin’ died, but Cranzalar and Vi were able to stabilize and heal her.

After resting up, the party was approached by Bailiff, a half-elf of indeterminate gender who was forced to communicate telepathically due to being deaf; this telepathy was one way, and only worked if the target was looking at a spell circle Bailiff had drawn.

Bailiff explained that the whole story of Floodwall’s Royals inheriting the power to keep the city standing is crabshit, and each of the Royals is immortal through individually unknown means. They’re tyrants that have been choking the life from the city for generations.

Bailiff was asking for the party’s help in bringing the Royals down.

Upon exiting the tomb, the party found themselves in a store room attached to a flood shelter down in the first tier, filled with the sick, infirm, and dying. Running this was woman named Sal, and her son, Llewelyn, who seemed able to predict the rise and fall of the tide. Verischa helped restock the shelter’s medicine supply, and Firuzeh failed at both stealing and giving gifts.

Sal was terrified at first, especially of Cranzalar’s connection to the Church, but eventually he proved himself by stabilising a child that wouldn’t have made it through the night. The party rested up, and once the waters had receded traveled up and out through a speakeasy run by the criminal network known as Dry Land, and specifically a member of theirs known as Redford. He initally wanted a favour for the shelter the party took, but Verischa’s powerful stink attack sent him running for the bathroom.

Outside, a group of Church Guards happened to be converging on the speakeasy, ready to bust down the door and cause some trouble – but upon seeing Cranzalar, the Royal that had decided on a whim to accompany them, Lilla, immediately took an interest. The Party was able to escape by shouting the word ‘FLOOD’ enough times (also through clever use of conjured water and fog), but Lilla pursued and threatened Cranzalar until he punched her in the face.

A fight broke out, and through a barrage of fire, thunder, frost, and being hit on the head really really hard, Lilla was slain – her horns the only thing left of her body. The party now faces a bit of a predicament: on top of all the stuff they found with the Cult of the Flood, the guards that escaped will undoubtedly have a story to tell about why Lilla didn’t return with them…