The Story Up Until Now...

This week there are going to be two posts about D&D. One today, that will catch you up onto what shenanigans we've been up to until now, and then one tomorrow that will detail tonight's session.

The journey started with Taelir and Morrigan, meeting by chance on the road in Bastion. Morrigan, who had just left home, explained to Taelir that she has left the orphanage to travel the plate and learn as much as she could while spreading the word of Frejya and doing the work of Kivati. Taelir tells her that if she travels with him, he plans on visiting all the continents on the plate. Morrigan agrees, and they move on. After a small adventure with some Dwarves, The headed West. After an undisclosed amount of time and difficulty, then end up on the south-eastern coast of Wulfheim, in a port town name Othello. As they depart their ship, the figurative opening sequence rolls and there is a montage of all the players. Selzanath, paddling his little dinghy in to dock with his hands; Matthias, waking up with the most wicked hangover in the bilge of a ship; Eris, slipping down the gangplank with a roguish grin on her face; Khonshu (a genassi swordmage), departing in a standoffish way; Relic (a warforged[read:organic-matter robot] warlock), activating in a crate in the same bilge as Matthias.
There's a short fight with the head of the dock, after which Taelir invites everyone to join his group and work for him. With nothing better to do and a few ulterior motives in evidence, everyone agrees.
They travel north through Wulfheim, fighting, camping, and encountering all sorts of situations. Relic left our party after a little while, deactivating himself as we slept. We defeated a centuries old elf... kind of. He's not really dead, but considering he was about three times our level, I think we did pretty well. Our northward quest took us to the town Sikelkaust, where Nibelung was stirring up trouble in the ports trying to intimidate people in that "Either you're with us or against us" kind of way. We picked up a Githyanki Psion here named Xable Juxtapose, who seems to have a frequency problem between the natural world and the other dimensions. He is constantly slipping in and out of them at random. After a bit of collaboration with the thieves' and the warriors' guilds, we created a diversion and managed to sneak on board the flagship if the Nibelung fleet, where we defeated and killed the captain. With the town relieved of the annoying Nibelung soldiers, some of us (Matthias) partied all night and then we were off in the morning. The ship we were on, the Woglinde sailed out East towards the norther coasts of the Nibelung peninsula. Unfortunately, a little while into our trip we sailed straight into the TAWD equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle and were assaulted by James the Bitchin' Giant Squid. Yes, that is really his name.
He sank our battleship and we woke up pretty much right on the northernmost tip of the peninsula, found by a barbarian from a mixed tribe living just off the coast. We spoke to the leader and she told us about the Sahuagin (big frog-people) who had taken over their temple and stolen the most holy Raiments of the Windfish. Well, says we, we can't let that happen. And off we go after a day of recovery to get rid of the problem.
The Sahuagin take minimal effort, but when we reach the basement and find one doing some terrible evil ritual that makes Morrigan physically ill with the dark energy radiating from it (a sure sign of the Spellplague), we take the fight up a notch, but don't make it in time to stop one from sacrificing itself to the evil swirling vortex of doom. We run for it when the dungeon starts to crumble.
And outside, much to our various horrors and jubilations, we run into a dragon. One of the most evil kind, too. It kicks our butts without much effort, but with some luck and a +10 fire resistance to Patrick, we manage to kill it. The raiments and the much-trashed temple are returned to their rightful owners, we set off to the northern pillar.
There, we find ourselves inside a world of pure, bright white. Surrounded by fantastical ballon-turtle hybrid creatures called Dirigiloons, we make our way upward and encounter what the locals call the Main Stage, an island floating in the middle of the pillar. The inhabitants are all Dragonborn, slightly crazy, who follow a man named Theo, who is a mithril dragon. We go up a few levels to meet him.
Theo challenges us to a fight to see if we are worth of gaining his knowledge. He kicks our butts, but we manage to get a few good hits in on him as well. In the end he wiped the floor with us, but agreed that we could ask him questions. It is from him that we learn that Taelir is searching for people called "Bookmarkers", who know pieces of the location of the "Bookman", keeper of the plate's one, true history. Why we are searching for this person Taelir won't say, but now we at least have some idea of what's going on.
On our way out, we are assaulted by some Escher-esque behemoth stairs and make a run for it.
And run some more.

From there, we head south and slightly west through Nibelung until we reach the town of Grentz near the border of Nibelung and Duskhelm where we have just encountered the troglodytes and roused the entire populace into doing our bidding. It took some skillful bluffing and a few well-placed diplomacy and religion checks, but now they believe that Eris is, in fact, one of the Popes of Nibelung. They follow us devotedly and now we are about to lead them into battle against the remaining troglodytes and the trolls that seem to be controlling them.

I will give you more about tonight's session tomorrow after I get home from work.

"Were you prepared at all for us to pull something like this? The Pope Incident will go down in TAWD history as one of our most ridiculous escapades ever."
"Are you kidding? I've been waiting for you guys to do something like this since we started!"
~Bob and I discussing our antics in Grentz