Skyship Islands 6

• Alice plays Amarylis, a female Centaur barbarian with a warhammer and an attitude.
• +Andrew is playing Inigo Yonez, a male Dwarven archaeologist.
• +Melysa is playing Annona, a female Jungle Elf shaman.
• Michael plays Engrin, a quiet male Human rogue armed with a crossbow.
• I'm playing Zanne, the female Human captain of a small skyship. 

Having portaged our boat around the waterfall, we split up - Annona and the leopard head into the jungle to ambush the gar-ogress, while the rest of us pole the boat upstream. The ogress spots the boat and wades after us, but Annona magically tangles her in the vines surrounding the stream. Amarylis leaps onto the bank, almost capsizing the boat as she does so. With his new bow, Engrin puts an arrow through the ogress' leg! I steady the boat and prevent it from drifting back downstream. The ogress breaks free and limps to the bank, pulling a large bottle from a leather bag. Before she can drink from it, she is dropped by one of Annona's arrows. 

The bottle is full of healing potion, and she's armed with a great-axe and a brace of throwing axes. Amarylis takes some of the throwing axes.

Further upstream, some of the party hear a cataract ahead, and also the sound of two gar-ogres - presumably the ogress' boys - engaged in loud conversation. Apparently they have lost a fight against a band of goblins, and are worried how their mother will react. We secure the boat around a bend in the stream, and set up an ambush at the edges of the shallow pool that lies at the bottom of the cataract. As the already-injured ogres splash down into the pool, they are met by a volley of missiles. Amarylis and I rush along the bank to engage them, but they both fall before we can get there.

Like their mother, these ogres are armed with axes and a potion, except that half of their potion had been used already.

Pressing on through the jungle for another few hours, we eventually reach the entrance to the ruins. Engrin and I check the passageway, and discover it has a pressure-pad mechanism to reset all of the traps within the complex. We decide to bypass it, hoping for easy access past any traps that have been already set off, and also hoping not to find any areas that are impassable unless the trap is reset...

Pressing into the gloomy ruins we encounter several set-off traps, with blades and barbs protruding from the walls. They seem to have been deliberately activated and left, with trails showing where goblins have moved around them. As we get deeper into the complex, we hear the sound of a goblin warband marching down the hall! We retreat a little and take cover in some side-corridors, and the group of a dozen or so goblins pass us by.

According to the crude map we'd recovered from one of the journal fragments, we are finally nearing our destination - the location of the final fragment, which will reveal to us the location of the fabled Fountain of Youth and a fabulous treasure!

Only one thing stands in our way - a long hallway, lined with pressure-pad activated dart traps. Without an easy way to block all the darts, I begin tapping out a safe path using my staff to test the paving stones...

>>> To be continued!

Skyship Islands 5

• Alice plays Amarylis, a female Centaur barbarian with a warhammer and an attitude.
• +Andrew is playing Inigo Yonez, a male Dwarven archaeologist.
• +Melysa is playing Annona, a female Jungle Elf shaman.
• Michael plays Engrin, a quiet male Human rogue armed with a crossbow.
• I'm playing Zanne, the female Human captain of a small skyship. 

On our way to the flying island on which lay the ruins of an ancient Elven civilisation, we stopped off at a bustling market city - one of the trading capitals of the world - to resupply and get some work done. I paid to have the ship's engines overhauled, increasing their "grunt" and giving her a better chance in strong winds and storms. Most of the party went shopping with loot gained from our previous expedition; I bought a bigger staff and some more leather armour, Amarylis got some custom spiked horseshoes, Engrin bought a bow and a new sword, and Inigo bought a pot of glue.

The ancient elven island was quite large, so we had little trouble locating it wending a slow circuit near the equator. We'd heard rumours that the jungle-choked ruins were now home to goblins and possibly gar-ogres, a particularly vicious breed with nasty needle-like fangs.

We landed the skyship on a rocky "shore" near a river that flowed from the interior to endlessly plunge off the edge, turning to mist long before reaching the island below and scattering rainbows beneath the ponderously floating rock. Matis the ship's engineer had brought a collapsible boat, so the main party assembled it and began punting upstream into the interior.

As we were carrying the boat around a cataract, a leopard pounced on Inigo and rendered him unconscious! Annona talked it down with her Beast-Speak magic, and restored Inigo to health with medicine and magic. She recruited the leopard to act as a guide and ally, and learned from it that the river ahead was the territory of a gar-ogress with two sons, the latter having recently headed further upstream to seek their own territories.

We discussed at length how to best get past the ogress. We eventually decided to have Annona and the leopard cause a distraction in the jungle, thus attempting to lure the ogress away while the rest of us punt past its campsite...

>>> Session 6

Skyship Islands 4

• Alice plays Amarylis, a female Centaur barbarian with a warhammer and an attitude.
• +Andrew is playing Inigo Yonez, a male Dwarven archaeologist.
• +Melysa is playing Annona, a female Jungle Elf shaman.
• Michael plays Engrin, a quiet male Human rogue armed with a crossbow.
• I'm playing Zanne, the female Human captain of a small skyship. 

A chamber full of undead warriors stands between us and the next fragment of journal (concealed in a statue), and four pirates have just entered the chamber to boot!

The pirates began fighting their way through the skeletons and zombies, heading across the room towards the statue. We fought conservatively as we had the longer distance to travel, and also we didn't mind if the undead and pirates fought each other. 

Shortly after the fight began, we'd made little headway against the dozen or so skeletons and zombies, but two of the pirates were surrounded and overwhelmed by the shambling horde while their companions reached the statue. I held our entry doorway while Annona and Engrin provided covering fire from the corridor. Amarylis ran around smashing the undead, while Inigo moved to hold the doorway the pirates had entered from, to prevent them leaving with our treasure.

One of the pirates climbed the statue and prised the ruby eye from its forehead. The area surrounding the statue was immediately engulfed in flames, killing the hapless brigand sitting on it, and setting fire to one of the zombies. The only remaining pirate just managed to dive free of the flames, but Engrin's crossbow quickly put an end to his good fortune.

We quickly finished off the remaining undead. We met with no casualties, but several of us suffered injuries. Amarylis' wounds required the attention of Annona's healing magic.

The great ruby from the statue lay heat-fractured on the floor, but we took it to break into smaller gems. The blue sapphire we'd found in the first ruin fitted into the idol's eye socket, and revealed a magically concealed chamber in the base of the statue. We retrieved the journal fragment and returned to the ship.

From the journal, we learned that the next journal piece was on a flying island, in the ruin of an Elven city. We briefly considered raiding, sabotaging, or sinking the pirate vessel moored off the coast, but decided against it. Instead, we took to the skies and headed towards our next destination.

>>> Session 5

Skyship Islands 3

• Alice plays Amarylis, a female Centaur barbarian with a warhammer and an attitude.
• +Andrew is playing Inigo Yonez, a male Dwarven archaeologist.
• +Melysa is playing Annona, a female Jungle Elf shaman.
• Michael plays Engrin, a quiet male Human rogue armed with a crossbow.
• I'm playing Zanne, the female Human captain of a small skyship. 

After routing the pirates in the canyon, we entered a back passage into the ruins, finding the impaled body of the fled pirate on a spiked wall trap. The first chamber had three doors and a spiked pit-trap. Two of the doors had the sounds of rattling bones behind them, and the centre one smelt of dessicated flesh. Inigo leapt the pit and opened the door, revealing a large room with three zombies inside.

Battle ensued! Engrin and I leapt across the pit to assist Inigo, while Annona fired her bow from across the pit and Amarylis threw rocks at them. The foul creatures were eventually defeated, and we examined our options - a portcullis or a door. Engrin picked the lock on the door, and we headed along a new corridor.

Around the next corner lay a hallway guarded by a strange magic-mechanical device armed with a cleaver and a brace of javelins. It kept trying to aim at living things that poke around the corner, but wouldn't fire if people didn't step completely into the corridor. After some thought, we got Inigo to shoot at it around the corner with his crossbow and knock the magical aiming crystal off the top of it. It stopped working when the crystal fell off.

We opened the next door, to discover a large chamber with several animated skeletons inside. On the far side was the statue of a yellow god with a large red crystal in its forehead - the journal fragment we seek is behind this gem. However, as we entered the chamber, the door on the other side opened and a gang of pirates swarmed in!

>>>Session 4

Skyship Islands 2

This session we had two new members who hadn't played PowerFrame before.

• Alice plays Amarylis, a female Centaur barbarian with a warhammer and an attitude.
• Michael plays Engrin, a quiet male Human rogue armed with a crossbow.

• +Andrew is playing Inigo Yonez, a Dwarven archaeologist.
• +Melysa is playing Annona, a Jungle Elf shaman.
• I'm playing Zanne, the Human captain of a small skyship. 

We met up with the new PCs shortly after the beginning of the session.


We reached the island after many days of travel. It was once said to be lush like the surrounding islands, but through some misadventure of the cult of life and death, it had been turned into a barren wasteland, and was now no more than a vast desert with a mountain in the centre. The heart of this mountain held our next destination, and a fragment of the journal.

As we neared the mountain, we were threatened by a massive sandstorm rolling in from the North. Rather than running past our destination and returning in the lee of the mountain, I made a snap decision to save time and pilot the ship into the shelter of a canyon on the closer slopes. We just managed to ride ahead of the storm, and pulled into a tranquil gorge as the storm raged overhead. Reno waited until now to tell me that he'd sighted the masts of a ship, possibly a pirate, moored on a cove on the Eastern side of the island.

We spotted two people descending the wall of the canyon along a steep track. We ascertained that they were not pirates, but fellow journal-seekers who had booked passage here on the ship we'd seen. Unfortunately for them, the crew were indeed pirates, and the two explorers had been abandoned. We teamed up together and mounted an expedition to the temple's back entrance, leaving Reno and Matis to look after the ship.

The path up the cliff wall led to where the canyon narrowed to just a few metres across, with both walls towering above us. We discovered a large group of pirates camped on the canyon floor, just near a cave that was the back entry to the temple. We tried to ambush them, but it quickly turned into a stand-up fight. The pirates were eventually defeated, but the last of their number ran into the cave...

>>> Session 3

Skyship Islands 1

Rohin's begun a new campaign as a fresh 2013 start for one of our groups. I wasn't present when the others brainstormed the game setting, but we've ended up with a fantasy world of mostly tropical islands (some flying), with several large continental civilisations nearby. All of our characters have some sort of investment in the journals of an archaeologist who explored the archipelago; he has died or disappeared, along with most of his apprentice collaborators. Many journal fragments are lost or scattered around the world, each containing fragmentary clues as to the location of a great ruin.

• +Andrew is playing Inigo Yonez, a Dwarven archaeologist.
• +Melysa is playing Annona, a Jungle Elf shaman.
• I'm playing Zanne, the Human captain of a small skyship. As a trader, her main motivations are to protect her ship and crew (Reno the engineer and Matis the sailor), make money, and discover the fate of one of her relatives who wrote some of the journal fragments. 

This blog series will be presented as Zanne's captain's log.


By combining our current knowledge, we were able to glean the location of a treasure that would lead us to another journal fragment. It was concealed in a giant ruined fort on an isolated island, which is now home to a large tribe of goblins.

We flew in by skyship under cover of morning fog. Reno and Matis took the ship aloft to avoid potential goblin arrows, and we proceeded on foot. We entered the ruins via a sandy pit that led into a tunnel, although we had to fight our way through a colony of giant crabs. Beyond, the passage began to show signs of stonework, although at one point the floor was little more than a crust of powdery sandstone. We determined the solid areas and proceeded to a great, heavy door leading into the ruins proper.

Inside, we heard the sounds of goblin activity nearby - they seemed to be camped rather than patrolling. We eventually decided to take them by surprise and negotiate from a position of strength. In return for a good supply of crab meat, and our assurances that we weren't there to kill anyone or take the place over, they allowed us to search the ruins - so long as we did not stray too far.

With our way clear, it was a simple matter to locate the gem in its concealed wall-space and depart. The gem has directed us to a desolate island a couple of weeks' travel to the South, where we'll find the journal fragment concealed behind the third eye of the statue of a yellow god in an abandoned temple, once home to a cult of life and death. We'll stop off at a nearby port to take on supplies before flying into the the heart of a blasted wasteland, rumoured to be rife with the undead...

>>> Session 2