So You Brought Us A Dwarf
The party starts in the tavern and makes introductions between the various members who don’t know each other. There’s some discussion of the fact that Captain Mills wants to talk to Mito about a package she delivered and that brings up the fact that the package she delivered to the appearing/disappearing tower reappeared in her room the day after she delivered it to the tower with a note saying it wasn’t for them and she should have known that. Apparently all she knows about the address is that it’s for “The Tower” and she should know it when she sees it, but it’s not that one.
The party goes to talk to Tobias about towers and he is, as always, thrilled to see Elmer. Elmer asks Papa Tibby if he knows anything about towers and he mentions that he knows of legends of several far to the west and the northwest, but doesn’t have any way of know if the one they visited is one of those or not. He does point out that those areas are rumored to be extremely dangerous. Elmer asks Uncle Tib Tab if he knows anything about the cloud, but he doesn’t. They have a team meeting where they huddle up right next to Tobias and discuss options and decide to go back to the cloud, as Mito says “regardless of the state of my package”. Tobias wishes them a fond farewell, after Gary scratches a rough copy of the map in the tavern on his wall and steals some jerky.
They decide to take a slightly different route to the cloud to…sneak up on it? Maybe? They decide to head due west then due south to reach the cloud. They run across a giant goat (not the Dire Goat of legend, just a regular giant goat) and leave it be, they also run across a fragment of road headed due west that they travel on for some time. Ovilyn rolls an arcana to check to figure out what he knows about wizard towers and it isn’t a whole lot, though he knows that wizards are the research and development caster class and their towers tend to be part home, part fortress and part research laboratory. They built with and of spells layed over and on top of each other and the raw building materials so they’re incredibly complex creations, capable of being and doing some strange and extraordinary things if built by a powerful wizard.
The party camps largely undisturbed at the end of their westward march, though Gary hears a stirge flying around near morning and gets Mito’s attention, who neatly blowdarts it. They head south and reach the cloud.
They decide to try to propitiate the cloud, since apparently the made it angry last time, by discussing louds what a fantastic, awe inspiring cloud it is and what wonderful lightning it has while they travel under it. It doesn’t seem to notice, but a few hundred yards into the cloud they spot a group of figures ahead and off to the side appears to walking in a large cicle around the very center of the cloud, where the lightning strikes, as if they’re patrolling.
The party comes up with a cunning plan, they tie up Elmer with knots they can slip free of easily, put a canvas sack over their head (it is a deeply disturbing question to ponder why Mito has a kidnapper’s hood in her pack) and Gary throws Elmer over his should and the whole party heads towards the patrol. The patrol sees them and walks curiously but warily in their direction. As they get close enough to see each other clearly and to communicate, the patrol calls out “Hey, what’re you people doing here? You’re not allowed here.” Gary responds by walking a little closer and tossing Elmer to the ground in front of him, then pointing at Elmer and giving the patrol a thumbs up.
“You brought us a dwarf? Why did you bring us a dwarf? Who are you?”
Gary smiles and points at Elmer, but Mito responds “Oh, we’re worshippers, we brought you a sacrifice!”
At this point the patrol is close enough to see the party clearly and the leader says “Heeeeeeeeey, where’d you get the headband, lizard guy?” while pointing at Gary’s bitchin’ lightning and cloud headband made from the storm wizards robes. He smiles and gives them a thumbs up and points at Elmer.
“Wait…that’s Bob’s robe, you’re the fucker who killed Bob! We found pieces of him GNAWED ON for a week! You asshole!” And the ptrol charges. Mito and Ovilyn try to reason with them but Elmer leaps up, throws off their bindings, whips the hood off their head, runs right at the patrol leader, goes to punch him in the face and misses entirely. Mito climbs onto Gary’s shoulders as a kind of mobile artillery platform and there’s a certain amount of scuffle, ending with the patrol dead and the party takes their sweet ass lightning bolt shaped swords worth about 300G or 75G each.
Gary makes a bitchin’ baldric out of pieces of the guards leather armor with ligntning bolts embossed into the leather.
They head further towards the center of the storm and spot a small, square temple with a huge spire coming out of the middle of the roof that appears to be being struck by lightning more or less constantly. Elmer determines with stone cunning that only the walls are stone, the spire and corners of the template appear to be made of something else. They approach and Elmer uses thaumaturgy to speak in a booming voice, telling the cloud they come in peace. The cloud doesn’t respond, but the storm guard on the other side of the temple does, walking around the corner and approaching.
Elmer approaches and attempts to greet the storm guard and the storm guard attempts to pound Elmer into the ground with a morningstar. There’s an exchange of blows, as it were and eventually Gary just cleaves him in half, unfortunately mostly ruining the heavy enamaled plate the storm guard was wearing, but enough of it remains intact to sell for roughly 500G or about 120G each.
Mito attempts to throw a rope around the spire so they can try to pull it down but fails a dex roll and ends up being struck by ligtning and knocked unconscious. Gary catches her as she falls off the rough and Elmer stabilizes her and gives her a healing potion. They decide to head back to town rather than open the temple doors and potentially face an even tougher fight than the storm guard.