Session 11

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Session 11
After some consideration, Erin put a finger to the small brass lever in the door frame and pressed down. The blue force field flickered twice, then disappeared. There was a keening howl from inside the tower, then nothing.

The whole party braced for an attack that never came. Confused, Erin flicked the lever up. The force field flickered back into existence. Lever down, and the force field winked out again.

Oops
They would later learn that the force field keyed to the lever - the sole means to operating the force field - had been accidentally created just a few inches too narrow (inside the wall that the lever rested on) so the force field could only operated from the outside of the tower. With the final miscast words of his permanent spell, the wizard had trapped himself inside his greatest creation!

Level 1
Finally, they looked past the entrance and into the tower. This appeared to be the lowest room of the tower, and was about 70 feet in diameter and 25 feet high. Inside the room are elegant furnishings, a well-stocked library a couple thousand books, and a gracefully curving staircase that went up to the next level.

There is a broad, masculine wooden desk on the west wall, and in the chair in front of it were the slumped skeletal remains of the tower's owner, Helmark the Arch-Mage. Aside from the creepy corpse, the room was wondrous, containing a number of magical creations, from clap-activated lamps to a wardrobe that cleanses and freshens clothes.

Helmark's Magic Furniture
The group resolved to remove Helmark's corpse from the tower and perform burial rights, even though they later learned that Helmark was a fairly terrible person.
 * Wardrobe of Cleansing
 * Desk of Concentration
 * Magic Lamps
 * Bed of Health
 * Easy Chair of Penmanship
 * Helpful Bookshelf of Organization

After an hour or two of playing with the extremely fun bookshelf and other magical appliances, they headed up the stairs to the second level.

Level 2
This level, of the same huge dimensions as the first, appeared to be a magical laboratory, and three force cages were active here. Inside the center force cage was a stairway leading up to the third level. Inside the left and right force cages were forms of two sleeping women. The woman on the left woke first as the party entered the room and rose to her feet, causing everyone a bit of embarrassed discomfort.

The woman was supernaturally beautiful and clad in a diaphanous white gown straight out of a low-budget sword & sorcery movie.

She cried out for aid, claiming to have been trapped in her cage for centuries. Her pleas seemed to wake the woman in the cage on the right, who stood and decried her counterpart as a liar and a demon. The woman on the right was also obnoxiously attractive, and wore a form-fitting outfit that could not have been comfortable for a half hour, much less centuries.

After a few minutes of listening to the two beings call for aid and denounce one another, the party found the panel in the room that operated the three force cages, and - not certain if either or both of the trapped women were actually demons in disguise, flipped the lever for the center cage so that they could access the stairs to the third level. Greg and Maggey stayed below to make sure that neither of the trapped women tried anything tricky, while the rest of the party headed up to level three.

Level 3
Taking the stairs up to the third level, the group found a wide array of experimental dimension-door and force field combinations. Some were quite ingenious and inventive, but apparently none were enough to breach the force field surrounding the tower. A great number of books, pamphlets and notes about force fields and dimensional travel were scattered throughout the books. Most of the books were torn apart and destroyed, as the wizard seemed to get increasingly frustrated with his failures.

The group searched around this room extensively, and about halfway through their search, heard a shout from below!

Maggey hollered up that the woman in the right-side force cage had turned into a small demon thing that she was pretty sure was a quasit.

Friend and Foe
The group raced down the stairs to see the ugly little thing cast a spell and wink out of sight. Dave wasn't having it. He cast a See Invisiblity spell and confirmed that it was still stuck in the cage.

Greg quickly flicked the switch for the cage of the woman on the left and apologized for not believing her. She turned out to be a nymph - a powerful fey - named Farrah who had once been the steward of the prairies near the tower. She had no hard feelings for them not immediately releasing her, and said she'd be back to reward them on the next day. Farrah then cast a spell, and stepped through a shimmering portal that appeared in the air. With a faint snap and fading smell of flowers, she and the portal disappeared.

With the nymph gone, the group focused on the problem of the demon. Erin ran down to flick the lever activating the force field so that even if the quasit evaded the group, it wouldn't be able to escape the tower. Through combined force of arms and magic, they released the force cage, then cornered and destroyed the creature before it could escape to its home dimension. Sam came down to give Erin a thumbs up, and then the whole group went back up to the third level to search for any secrets.

After a while, Paul slid aside a secret door, revealing another room, and a semi-ethereal figure waiting for them.

Level 4
"Please keep away, my friends!" the giant-sized creature said in a friendly, telepathic voice, "I have no wish to harm you."

The creature explained that it had been bound to this room by Helmark for 1,001 years of servitude, and was sword to fight to the death to keep anyone out except the master of the tower.

The group looked past the being - which they guessed was a Djinn - and saw a horde of spellbooks, piles of gold, and many other trinkets, all kept in orderly stacks throughout the room.

Not wishing to provoke a fight, the group bid the Djinn goodbye and went down to level one to regroup and figure out what to do.

Continue to Session 12