Show me the way to go home

So we finished our cleanup on the Black Lightning and set Dearthen to rowing us towards the inky curtain. We rowed through and as we saw the sun anew we looked behind us and noticed there was no sign of the cloud wall.

Before long we reached shore, pulled the boat up, and went into the nearby village. The first person we met was very friendly, but didn&rsqo;t have much information to offer. We were the first visitors in over 20 years, the last one being a Northrog That sounded promising, but he suggested the mayor would be the one to talk to.

We didn’t get much additional information from the mayor—there were no written records (the lighthouse where they were stored having burnt down long, long ago), and they didn’t even know of any other settlements on the island...

We were sitting in the inn trying to decide what to do next as night fell, and all the locals transformed into masses of tentacles. Obegard managed to enchant several of them to stop them participating in the fight, and we managed to kill the other three and retired to our room and waited to see if there was any more trouble.

I tried to use Malakar’s wand to mend the damage we’d taken but it failed to work, even though I was sure I’d down the right thing. I asked Obegard and he said it was probably something to do with the plane we’re on—divine magic won’t work at night time. Oh joy.

The following day everything was back to normal and the locals were totally oblivious to what had transpired, though they had noticed that three “people” had disappeared. Apparently it wasn’t the first time people had mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps this is why they’re called the islands of light and shadow...

We decided we’d try to spend the next few days scouting during the day but making sure we were safely locked away by nightfall. While this kept us safe there was another problem—every time we had Erson fly out he’d get lost and was somewhat lucky to find his way back. We set out as a group and after several days had the feeling we hadn’t gone anywhere.

We weren’t sure what to do, but as Obegard explained some basics of planar mechanics it occurred to me that the orientation problems were probably tied to daylight, so in order to go out searching we would have to travel at night when living creatures transformed into aberrations.

As we prepared to set out that night, it appeared that we’d somehow made our way into the middle of the nearest forest, despite not recalling crossing the river that completely separated the village from the rest of the island. Our theory seemed to hold though, as we were confident that we were actually making progress by night.

While probably too good to be true, we actually came across a small clearing with a building in it and I wondered if it was possible we’d reached our goal already. We moved into the clearing and were attacked by two giants with three arms. We made a mess of them and then moved up to the building.

We opened the front door and something lurched into motion inside. We closed the door again and Obegard explained that this sort of construct has a control amulet and if we could find it we could make the construct act as a guardian. He magically determined that the amulet was in an adjacent room and then cast a spell that allowed us to walk through the wall.

Obegard grabbed the amulet and it certainly seemed to work as he made the construct obey him. There was also a circle on the floor that Obegard said reeked of old magic.

There didn’t seem to be much else of interest but it didn’t look like we’d be doing anything else that night so we searched around and I found a trapdoor which could help to pass the time.