Quinn is...if not relieved, at least less concerned, that this target is off her back.
Yex and Hal swap: he takes the chainmail, Hal takes the boots of speed.
VS asks Dron to stand guard over us, with a friendly boop, as we take a Long Rest.
Z13 casts many Find Familiars into the Ring of Spell Saving: everybody gets a familiar!
Pythia declines the Familiar; there's some growling from somewhere.
VS gets a Crab: she feels affinity with it, somehow.
Yex gets a Lizard. It doesn't have a name. Hal gets a Weasel, named Wenceslas.
We take a Long Rest in the portal room, with the vats and so on.
Z13 looks around for any of Zorn's notes that they missed the first time around.
Quinn wants to see if she can find any of Zorn's handwriting. Z13, having the same handwriting, draws a bunch of hearts and hands them over - it's not handwriting! Quinn complains.
Pythia drops a Detect Magic on the puppets from previously, but they're completely inanimate. On Investigation, they seem to be made of some fragment of soul and mortal remains, Transmuted from actual flesh. There's nothing that implies they have to be entirely dead.
If we get the chance, Quinn says, we should go to Prime Zorn's lab and loot the hell out of it.
The first thing Z13 does when he wakes up is reanimate the disembodied head. It's a little rank.
Wenceslas makes a cute little chirp. And then coming from Pythia's pack, a responding chirp?
So we going to go through this thing or what? Yex asks.
Where does it go?
Astral Plane, Quinn says. Adventure! Z13 replies. Friendship. Don't worry about it.
You don't have friends in the mortal plane?
Not really! Z13 responds.
VS hops on board her magic carpet and zooms into the portal, because of course she does.
The Astral Plane is a purple void, kind of abyss-like, with floating rock islands. Kind of like Jupiter, except without the gas.
Pythia: is there breathable air there? She tosses a pebble through, and Z13 extends his palm, spider on it, through the portal. Hal has already leapt through it.
VS is just making loops on her magic carpet. Way in the distance, there's a faintly glowing object, with smaller objects slowly moving around it.
And about two football fields away, there's another floating island, with dragon-like creatures, but not quite dragons...like they haven't got arms. No arms, just legs.
Dron, following VS, is thoroughly unfazed by this environment.
Hal asks VS to come down. Z13 similarly yells at her to come down, you twit.
Quinn peeks through the portal cautiously, leaps through, and immediately checks for traps. There are no traps. She isn't speaking any, but it's just paranoia.
Pythia Detects Magic - there's some magical background radiation, but it's not dedicated to any particular school.
Hal: VS, maybe come down and tell us what you see?
VS greets the dragon-likes, but they don't...speak back. VS knows they're Drakes..like less intelligent dragons, usually the servants of dragons. Dogs, really.
Dron is a little jealous. It's okay, Pythia says, booping him on the snoot, you're still cool.
Without trying to prepare the ground in any way, VS tries to pet one of the Drakes. She's too overconfident from the previous draconic success.
The Drake is not at home to this. All five Drakes are not at home to this.
Z13 is committing to help. Quinn turns to Pythia and says, I regret that it's always like this. Pythia retorts that Quinn went through the portal too, so she's really as much to blame. Quinn shrugs.
Why are we fighting dragons again? Quinn asks wearily. Again? Pythia asks. How many have you fought?
Well, two. One killed DW, you remember him. Another one we stole a goblet/person from, it's all very complicated.
VS: oh...I thought you'd be my friends...
The Drakes are snapping at her vengefully. She zooms away on her magic carpet, back to safety.
Dron moves up and readies Lightning Breath to protect VS.
Wenceslas rummages around in his backpack and retrieves Hal's Holy Symbol. In his palm, Wenceslas holds the Symbol aloft as Hal bellows a Prayer of Denunciation, Frightening a Drake until he takes damage.
As a bonus action, Hal Bluetooths up, and Wenceslas secrets the Holy Symbol away again.
Yex, with his distinct lack of ranged weaponry, can only chuck a handaxe. It misses. It didn't make it quite far enough, and then...fell into the other island's gravity well.
He tells his lizard to make rude noises at them, and they are completely not bothered by this.
Quinn observes that they're Blue Drakes, and are Lightning based. They understand Common and Draconic. They have Blindsight. They have Darkvision. They can burrow. They can fly.
...huh. Blindsight is...not good. Quinn Hides.
One drake wings over...right into Pythia's prepared Hold Monster. He's Paralysed, and now falling slowly. She loses her shit laughing at this little planetoid. He's now a Moon Drake.
Another Drake comes through and runs right into Z13's Fireball. Unfortunately he's also in Quinn's Blindsight radius. He also tries Lightning.
Another Drake comes over - and notices Quinn behind a rock (...hello.) chancing a Yex opportunity attack along the way. It attempts two clawing attacks, but this does not go through the Shield. Thanks, Z13. Also, rude, Drake.
Pythia's under attack. Between the Cloak of Displacement and a Shield, nothing gets through.
VS turns herself and the Z3 head into T-rexes. The head feels great about this.
Dron Constricts a Drake: 34 damage (bludgeoning and slashing) and Grappled. Dron looks back at VS, questioningly, as if asking "are you impressed by this...?"
She is. The crab snaps its claws, sexily. Pythia is aghast at all this.
Pythia Polymorphs a Drake into a rat, and chucks it into her backpack, where there is happy trilling. She goes back to laughing at the Moon Drake, and scurries off.
Hal does a bunch of damage, swinging with Cervantes, 89 damage total. He's pretty roughed up, but he's still alive! Hal Misty Steps away.
Yex successfully pushes a Drake into the gap; it's actually, wow, he pushed a Large creature, and there's a moment of elation from him because haha now the Drake is going to fall!
But he forgot that Drakes can fly.
Yex stomps over to the Drake on Quinn and hits it.
Quinn ducks out with Disengage across the map, and then drops a Silent Image of a big blue dragon.
The Drakes are terrified at this sudden dragon and immediately make a run for it.
Quinn turns on Minor Illusion and loudly scolds them at the Drakes in Common. They're confused but can't figure it out.
Quinn looks at Z13 and casts about for help. Z13 is next to useless and cannot help.
Yex scampers over and shouts in Draconic SCRAM YOU PUNKS. The Hold Monster Drake is also released and runs for it.
Hal says hurrah we all made it through..! He has 18 hit points left.
Turns out they were supposed to be our mounts. Well, shit.
VS drops her Polymorph reluctantly and figures she'll try to Persuade the Drake to agree to be their ride.
Pythia wants to keep the rat as a Drake grenade. It's very lame, she says, very lame. Irwin! We're going to need your friend back.
There's unhappy trilling from inside her pack, and a little Siamese cat head pokes out with a rat in its mouth, asking if this is all really necessary, and if he can eat it.
You know they never let you eat it! It just explodes in my bag!
A cat with bat wings: Quinn is losing her shit that she can hear any of that. WHAT IS THAT.
Rude, Pythia says.
Oh, sorry, where are my manners. WHO IS THAT.
Z13 knows it's a Tressym, because it's a wizard familiar.
Seeing Wenceslas, Erwin drops the rat and licks his chops. Wenceslas wheezes like he's been smoking for forty years.
K pulls up next to Erwin and says, hey, what's up.
Did you like that idea? You could have dropped the Drake grenade!
Yeah, I like that. PCs, amirite.
Everybody else just sees an owl talking to a winged cat.
VS starts prepping for the Persuasion.
Quinn absentmindedly searches through her stuff for some meat, and chucks Erwin some. NICE, he replies.
K huffily asks why he's never been fed. You don't need to eat! Erwin shares some in solidarity.
The Persuasion works: he's nuzzling up to VS.
The Drake can carry two, the carpet can carry two...two of us don't have a ride.
Why don't we just...send VS off with Yex or something to get another Drake.
Pythia puts 23 health on Z13.
You want the head? Z13 asks. No, I've got the crab, replies VS.
VS calls out to the other Drakes. They're hiding, in a sour mood, under the island.
She pets the Drake she's on, to show she's not a threat.
VS attempts a pyrophone performance to soothe the savage beast.
She plays the song of her people, full of fifths and power chords, and the Drakes are immediately fascinated by this.
Erwin wanders up to Quinn and says, you could Minor Illusion a drum solo. You can do that. Everybody else just hears insouciant mewing.
It's a 2. This doesn't float their boat. But DM says, you know what, you soothed them first, so I'll allow it.
VS returns with a flight of Drakes. Holy crap, she did it, Z13 gawks. Of course she did, Quinn says.
I want the Moon Drake, Pythia shouts, and Z13 claims the one with the smoothest scales, since at his age, he can't be having with that chafing.
Quinn looks for the one that tried to attack him. Dude, rude.
Hal looks for the one he pronounced his vow of enmity on and says, I retract that. The dog-like Drake is confused and doesn't really understand this.