One promise I made to myself when I started adventuring was that I would always stay on my home plane of Tyrra, where I knew what to expect. I promised myself that I would never go to any of the elemental planes, because I have no great love for elementals. While some elementals, such as Nanaki the Dream Elemental, have often proven themselves helpful, other elementals have generally shown themselves to be single-minded and destructive. For this reason, I decided that it would always be in my best interests to not engage in what is commonly known as “plane hopping.”
Of course, that all changed this past Avendale gather. On the first night of the gather, Telaris offered me a chance to go to the elemental plane of Dream, and for one reason or another, I accepted. Fortunately, we survived that encounter with relatively little damage, and I again swore to myself that I would not go plane hopping again. I told myself that it was a one time thing. Of course, I was wrong.
The next day, I was waiting to go on an adventure when I noticed that there was a little bear scavenger cub in town that everyone was gathered around. It motioned for us to follow it and ran off into the woods, so of course we all followed it. Now, one of he primary rules of following cute little things into the woods is that they always lead you into an ambush. This was no different. We were ambushed by some form of goblins, and we were all forced to retreat. We fought off the goblins at the edge of the woods, and most of our party headed back to town. For some reason, though, I thought that the bear scavenger might still be there, so I went back into the woods after it.
And my instincts were correct. I found the bear scavenger behind a tree, and began talking to it. As I talked to it, slowly but surely more people began to show up. We learned that the bear scavenger was actually not a bear scavenger at all, but rather a pooka, a form of fae. It simply chose the form of a bear scavenger because it liked it. We asked it why it had come to Tyrra from its plane, but it gave us no direct answer. All it told us was essentially that it had come because it felt like it.
We tried to continue questioning it, but then we were attacked by another wave of goblins. They told us to get away from the pooka, but we resisted. We tried to fight them, but there were too many of them and we had to fall back. We went back to the edge of the forest again, and the pooka hurried off into the forest. I watched it, and tried to figure out the general direction in which it was headed, but I was simply not skilled enough to get more than a general idea.
Fortunately, I was not alone. My friend Julak was with us, and Julak is skilled in the ways of tracking. He picked up the trail of the pooka, and followed it all he way back to a rock. He picked up the rock, and underneath a gateway to the plane of the fae was revealed. Now, at this point our party consisted of Julak, his friend Dakar, my oft-traveling partner Dale, Dale’s longtime teammate Jimmy Redgrave, and myself. We sent Dale and Dakar back to get help, and in he meantime Julak, Jimmy, and I studied the portal. It appeared as though the portal was beginning to fade, though, so we jumped through.
As expected, we landed on the Plane of the Fae on the other side of the portal. Not long after we jumped through, the rest of our help arrived. Titania, a human who is part fae, and thus is probably the most knowledgeable expert on the Fae in Avendale, was the first to arrive. Unfortunately, though, it was a small portal, and thus Titania, who was also our most skilled fighter, had to leave her shield behind. Also arriving with Titania were Lask the Sarr healer, Lili the Quentari elf healer, Sian the wolf scavenger, and another, younger wolf scavenger whose name I unfortunately do not know.
After we assembled our group, we began to move forward, and were confronted by dark goblins. We could see a giant labyrinth behind them, which seemed to be the only thing breaking up the otherwise beautiful landscape. They were willing to give us information, but only in exchange for silver pieces. Interestingly enough, they didn’t want gold, because it had no value to them, whereas silver could be used to make silver weapons and thus had value.
Fearing that they might have hostile intentions, and also fearing that the portal might close behind us, we sent the young wolf scavenger back to get more help. We then continued negotiations with the dark goblins, while we explored the area. Dakar managed to find a stream nearby, and the stream was exceptional in that he water flowed uphill. Dakar borrowed a cup from Lili and filled it with water from the stream. We vowed, though, not to drink the water until after we got back to Tyrra.
Meanwhile, in our negotiations with the dark goblins, Titania wanted to find information about her father, who is rumored to have been a Fae king. The rest of us were just basically curious and wanted to see the labyrinth. The dark goblins warned us that the portal would close behind us if we pushed forward, but we were unfazed. We offered the chance to go back to anyone who was scared, but the dark goblins told us that either we all had to go back or we all had to stay. We had already sent one person back, they told us, and that should be enough.
We proceeded to circle around the labyrinth, but it was very hard to keep track of where we were going and where we had already been. It almost seemed as if the labyrinth was shifting around us. Sian tried leaving marks, but they didn’t help very much. Julak tried tracking, but the ground was too smooth. We just had to keep pressing forward.
Eventually, we came into a large open chamber guarded by dark goblins. These ones weren’t as friendly as the ones we had dealt with previously; they simply attacked. Fortunately, they weren’t too strong and so we were able to hold them off. Unfortunately, more kept coming out of the walls, and so we were forced to withdraw from the chamber. Interestingly enough, during the battle one of the dark goblins referred to Titania as a fae princess, leading me to believe that the rumors about her father being a fae king are in fact true.
Anyway, at this point we were beginning to get a little desperate. We were low on healing, and we didn’t have any life spells left. We wandered around the labyrinth a bit more, and came to another chamber. This time we did not kill all the dark goblins, instead opting to keep one as a prisoner, and use him as a guide to get us through the labyrinth. He took us into another chamber, and he dark goblins in that chamber didn’t bother us because we had their friend. He led us over a bridge, then through a long corridor, and finally over another bridge. At the end of all that, we came out into another chamber. There were some dark goblins in this chamber (eating a baby, I believe), and they told us to leave. We told them that leaving is what we were trying to do, but that we couldn’t find a way home. They briefly consulted amongst themselves, and decided to open a portal for us. They walked over to a brick structure, and slapped on it with their hands in a strange rhythm until a portal appeared.
Relieved that we now had a way home, we began to walk towards the portal, but the dark goblins got in our way, as if to say “not so fast.” They told us that we would have to fight our way through them if we wanted to escape. Not having a choice, we drew our weapons and attacked. We were felling them quickly, but more were arriving just as fast. Finally, deciding that we had no other choice, we just made a mad dash for the portal and jumped through.
Fortunately, all the water in Lili’s cup survived to the other side of the portal, and made for some interesting events when people decided to drink it. Julak got really drunk off of it, and when Titania tried it, she found herself able to speak only in nouns from then on until it wore off.
Summarizing, then, we all made it out alive, and we learned some valuable information about the fae plane along the way. I am not saying I am going to become a regular plane hopper now, but I assume that sooner or later I will end up plane hopping again. Any you know what’s strange? Somehow, that doesn’t bother me as much anymore.
Scribed by Seronia on the 6th day of June in the year 602.