Session 11

The party was resting in the abandoned building they had made thier temperary headquarters. Aravo Zacksted was attempting some basic repairs on the building to make it suitable living location. Before he could finish a woman riding a bear burst in through a wall. It was Freyja Hrolfsdottir, the sister of Skarl Hrolfson. After recieving the letter and her father's sword after her brother's death she determined that she was obligated to pick up where her brother left off and finish his mission. Having proven a remarkable command over nature the other members of the party agreed to allow her to join them.

As soon as they were ready they introduced her to Paris who seemed a little worried about being so close to a fully grown bear but otherwise was pleased with Skarl's replacement. He was also ready to give them details of their next mission. He was detecting a demon artifact above Lake Themes. According to some ancient legends he had dug up there was once a city in the sky that hovered above the Themes and he wondered if it was still up there and currently concealing the artifact. He told them that his contact would be waiting for them there to aid them in getting to such a city.

Zathras teleported them close to lake, but they could not get too close at the Lake's energies interfered with magical scrying and teleportation. They travelled the rest of the way on foot. One there they found the cabin of the curious gnome inventor who had helped them reach the bottom of the ocean once before. He gave them the buoyancy rings once again, modified to allow buoyancy in air. After Freyja figured out a way to bring her bear along the group took to the skies and floated to cloud level. They found a large clustering of clouds that seemed strangely thick and floated towards it. When they passed through the cloud layer they found themselves in the floating city of Avalon.

They found the local population of bird-people very frightful of them. Despite their best efforts the make peaceful contact the Avalonians were frightened by them. The guards came to 'escort' them to their commander to be questioned. They were introduced to Captain Keller, one of the ranking officers in the Avalonian guard. They learned that the Avalonians had been constantly under invasion from the Astraeans since the start of the war and that had built them a distrust for 'groundwalkers'. They were highly devoted followers of the Trinity and unwilling to let up their ground to any dragon and had been fighting a desperate battle to keep their independance. Recently they had just lost the western island of the city and Keller was to lead a force to retake it soon and had little time to deal with these groundwalkers.

The party surprised him by volunteering themselves for the next battle. He told them that would be allowed as long as they didn't mind being put right on the front lines, which of course they didn't. They joined the Avalonian forces in the battle for the west city. They successfully fought back a wave of harpy invaders but were forced back by a swarm of air elementals who were creating high pressure winds that made it impossible for the winged Avalonians to fight and a retreat was called.

Defying orders from the general, Keller was prepared to launch a surprise attack by flying under the western city and surfacing on the other side. They would be closer to the dragon who was summoning all the elementals there, and if they took him out they would all disappear. The party liked this plan and volunteered to come with him. After facing off against a few air elementals they came face to face with the dragon himself, Abiss. The dragon was young and arrogant but still incredibly powerful, and yet still proved no match for the party. Keller scored the final hit, piercing it with his javelin and watching as its lifeless body plummetted off the side of the city.

Though Keller ended up recieving most of the credit for defeating the dragon the party's contributions weren't completely overlooked by the Avalonians. They were given a chance to talk to Yonatan himself to ask about the location of the demon artifact they had come to find. Yonatan looked over the members of the party and questioned each in turn, concerned about the future of a world that was in their hands. He particularly looked to Aravo, the only Trinity worshipped in the group. He did tell them that the artifact they sought was in the city, they would only need to travel westward into the grounds that had been conquered by the dragon. He gave them his blessing before sending them on their way.