The Pinky Portal

  Present

Munch

• Cody Dieback. Human Male Wizard from Highport – Andrew
• Jack "Blocker" Jones. Human Male Temple Fighter of Aquamarina from Porn City – Jamie
• Tom Eade. Human Male Fighter from Porn City – Jeff
• Esmeralda "Ezme" Abernathy. Human Female Temple Fighter of Soixante Neuf from Scabport – Shane
• Ardern. Human Female Priestess of Mr Quail from Porn City – Kevin
• MARMALADING Rock Hammer. Human Male Barbarian from Central Plains – Steven
• Willow. Half-elf Male Caribou Gorn Priest from Porn City - Chris
• MARMALADING Lois Price. Human Female Wizard of Porn City – Ian
• Munch Ease. Human Male Thief from Porn City – Darryl

by Munch

Well there's we all stand, in a hole underneath a destroyed Shi Estate, no sign of Thackery, a vibrating orb around us, a hatch in the floor which we ain't seen before and in the open hatch a pinky coloured portal with a stick pushed halfway through it. 

Now what is on the minds of most of us? With this group of folk I have been with for some time now there is never a plan B, and usually not even some remote form of alteration of a plan A, so we all knew despite the back and forth discussion, that we would  always go through the portal. But we did the usual um and ahh like stuff before we traipsed our way back into the destroyed Shi mansion and settled down for a session of healing and general getting spells and stuff like that. 

Light-beam sword

I don't do none of that spell like stuff so instead got out the new spiky wand prong thingy and had a good shifty at it. Longer than the short one I already had, and this one with two buttons rather than one, must be twice as good. I press on one of the buttons, making sure me other arm was out of the way. There was no way I was gunna test this on meself or even anyone else in the party. Slap a dash and out comes this light-beam about the thickness and length of a short sword blade. Pressing the button again and it disappeared. Pressing the other button the same light comes out but this time the length and width of a long sword. I reckons if anything touches that light, whoopsey blam bingo and that's gunna hurt. But I ain't no good at those sorts of long weapons so reckons someone else might like to have a bit of a crack at this thing. Maybe someone will ask about it at some point.

Anyhow we all gets back up to fighting fitness and down we goes all ready for jumping through the portal.

The pinky portal looks back at us as we all stand around and Tom and Cody hatch a plan. Tom holds the end of a normal rope, no ways they're sticking me magic rope down that, and Cody slides down and through. Once he disappears Tom can no longer feel any vibration or movement on the other end, so of course we assume all is good and fine and one by one without hesitation we slide down the rope and through the portal, Tom securing the rope and coming down last.

There we all stands, in a cavern about 15 paces in length and a large pillar in the middle. This here pillar looks right out of place being sort of carved and man made like but nothing else around. Also in the side of the pillar is some sort of hexy hole cut into it and some smart bugger reckons some sort of key-thing would probably fit into it quite well. There is a thunderous sound in the distance and a sort of damp feeling in the air, so Willow changes hisself into a little bird and flutters off to check things out.

Meanwhile Cody decides to have a bit of a play with the pinky portal in the side wall of the cavern, you

know, the one we jumped through. He sticks a couple of things into it and is able to pull them back out but there is a problem, they have been cut off up to the point where he had pushed them through. Looks like going back through the portal could be a little risky on the staying-alive front.

Birdy Willow returns turns hisself back to human like and says there is a big waterfall what is in our way but there is land and the like beyond. Lucky we has Cody with us cause he has some fancy spell that will let us pass through the waterfall and not get washed away by it (Airy Water), so Jack volunteers to go through and check out what is on the other side.

Whilst he is away some of the party do various hand wavy stuff, magic all good and priests can connect with their god so we must be some ok'ish like place. So we all decide to go through the waterfall and find ourselves in a large crater.

Jack returns from his squizzing around and tells us all we is in a big crater with high walls and some sort of interesting hole right in the middle. so we wander off to this hole and there is one of the sliding

spirally tunnels like we have seen before with an orb at the bottom of it. So down we go but this time there is no orb at the bottom just a bit of old metal lying around, though the metal looks a bit like the stuff the orbs are made of. Nothing else of interest so back up the spiral tunnel we goes.

We head up to the top of the crater a bit of a struggle but we is all in good health so no real probs. Just below the lip, we stops, and Cody, the best sneaker we has, heads off to check out what is up there. He pokes his head up over the lip and spies a bit of a prob, a bunch of nasties in some sort of small camp. 

We is talking right nasties, Gobbos of course, some orcs, even gnolls but worst off some right major big bugger too (ogre or giant). We knows we is going to have to be right careful, so as to make sure we are not invited to their next barbeque, if you catch me meanings.

Cody is being real careful like, and it a little concerned so he decides to put his thinking cap on. Not only is he a pretty good sneaker he is one of them wizardy boys with all sorts of brainy like abilities, so he figures out that we are now about 1,000km clib (north) of where the other side of the portal is, and that there are a couple of towns not too far away from us, named Angel and Halo. After thinking and

scratching his chin for a bit he reckons Halo is a fair distance away and that the crater we are currently hiding in is at exactly the location of the town of Angel. Something mighty big has exploded here

and what was the town of angel is no more.

He knows he needs to find out some more so he sneaks up closer to the nasties to see if he can dig up more dirt on these boys. he casts one of his spells that lets him understand other languages (Comprehend Language)  and hears the following:

"What a waste of time, why are we here? We caught the black guy. We have to listen to the human black bitch who tell us to wait around, then she tortures and kills him. then tells us to wait here and guard, bugger this I am so bored and we is running outs of them good brub." 

Good info thinks Cody but then he notices some wolves a little way a way, who are also part of this band, and starts getting that puckering feeling in his nethers. Wolves can smell real good like and his current invisibility and sneakiness is no match for them noses. So he buggers back off to us, and it don't take us long to realize that plan z is the best option here so off we scarper as quietly and quickly as we can.

This we do successfully and soon the crater is well behind us, with me and some of the others making sure our tracks are well-hidden so we is feeling pretty good we can't be followed.

We are a bit confused after an hour so we stops and does a bit of talking like so as to work out what is going on. We works out some woman has killed Thackery and there is a blood trail that we are following but we don't know whose blood or why. Also Cody notes the sky-angle of REAL, and calculates that we is back in time, 7 days!

This makes me brain hurt, how can it be last Monday when I have already had last Monday. I reckons to just leave all this weird shit to them brainiacs. We reckons our best course of action is to use our dogs to just follow this blood trail, it is all we have left as a plan anyway.

As we follow the blood trail, these dogs of ours are right good at this stuff, we come across a figure in the distance strung up to a tree. We close on the slowly swinging figure we see it  has its guts and all

hanging out like, and it is a woman. On closer inspection we recognize her. It is Mage Till, one of them women from Greybank that was part of the weird cult up that way, and she looks like she has been dead for about a week. I tells you she was pretty ripe so I didn't get too close and we decides to just leave her swinging in the breeze what with none of us brave enough to get too close and what with us having no qualms with leaving the dead unburied. 

But there is more than air and sawdust between some of our heads so we decide to use more spell-like stuff Speak with Dead and have a bit of a chin wag with her before we heads off. It is some sort of complicated spell, we can ask 5 questions but she can only give us 1 word answers. What a palaver it took us for bloody ever to works out what we wants to ask but finally we end up with the following:

1. Were you following Thackery? yes
2. What does the woman want with Thackery?  Mayiar
3. Where were you headed? Thackery
4. Who is your leader? Thackery
5. Where is the hexagonal key for the pillar? Thackery

Off we goes following the trail in a battle direction, travelling at night and hiding out during the day. On the second night the trail begins leading down into a canyon and we decides to find a good hidey hole and watch and get a good shifty on things before going down too far. 

Well only after some bright bugger thought that maybe Willow doing his animal change thing would be a good idea, and he turns into an owl and flies around and through the canyon, seeing a large wooden outpost with figures and wolves in it, a large cave entrance and a nice hidey hole like copse of trees and bushes.

So with me great night-sight ability, I lead the rest of the party to the copse, we make ourselves nice and hard to see and begin a bit of a watch and see plan. Dawn does it's usual hitting one on the head and we observe quite a bit before we start thinking about what we do next. 

There is a spring in the middle of the canyon with a small lake around it but there is something not quite right with it. The brainiacs in the party reckon that it looks impossible as the water needs to flow out of the canyon but there is no stream or river leading out. In addition we notice that the wolves that Willow saw at night are not around during the day. the place is guarded by ogres with one at the entrance to the cave mouth and a couple by the spring. Cody does his invisible sneaky thing and hunts around above the cave mouth looking for a chimney or some way in but finds nothing.

Lady in the pool

Discussions in whispers are held as usual and the usual plan A comes to the fore. After a whole day of watching half the boys and girls are bored and want to do the usual charge thing right into the cave mouth. However it is decided to wait at least one more day which we do having a quite night of repose and then the next morning we sees this woman come out of the cave entrance head down to the spring and have a bathe and stuff. I was too far away to see much but I reckons she enjoyed it as much as I did. whilst I was keeping a close eye on this woman just to make sure she did no bad stuff of course, Cody does the sneak bit again and heads up towards the cave entrance. 

He pokes his head into the entrance and sees a bunch of gobbo guards and realizes it might be a little tricky to go further so returns back to the rest of us. Whilst he was away I reckons I only blinked twice whilst I kept me eyes on the woman, I took me responsibilities very seriously.

Plan A was still near the top of the party's agenda, so it was time for me to put on me big boy trousers and use me great ability at seeing in the dark and have a right good shifty at this spring and why there is no stream leading out of the canyon. So that night I head around to the funken side of the canyon and sneak towards the spring. I comes across a little stream and follow it a bit. It leads into a very small hole in the side of the canyon, just big enough to crawl into. So in I goes and crawl along with the water only a foot deep. I crawls along for a bit and it opens out into a small cave and I can see another exit on the

other side of the cave. 

Perfect I thinks to meself, not only not plan A but a potential entrance into the cave complex down that there passage and much safer place for the party to hang out and observe.

So that is where I is gunna finish this part of me memoirs, with me heading back in the dark to tell the rest of them buggers we now might have another option other than a full on charge at the front entrance.

me next entry might fill ya in on what happened next.