Cosmic Hunters (OOC)

[chaincomplex]

The control you have over Teru when you break the soul gem is basically the line from trap the soul interpreted generously. Since Teru is dramatically level-drained when freed, and probably missing a gem of requisite value besides, a naively given order to swap souls would fail and he would be free. At which point he would try to skedaddle and put the party in a nasty position: if they kill him, one of his clones would awaken somewhere else. Unfortunately, the main party never ended up getting its caster, who would have warned them of this potential problem.

A patron would be able to point out the same thing, depending on how powerful they are. Sofie would be able to do so. The soul swap order must be given very precisely and still there is a risk in its execution. Sofie would probably suggest she just flies Teru's soul gem up to one of Lunia's many fort-prisons where he would be held and slowly redeemed over centuries (well beyond the scope of the adventure). If the party insists on soul swapping, she would stand by, preparing to wish herself, the party, and Teru into Celestia should the gambit fail, and try to force him to surrender with sheer number of angels. Killing would just awaken a clone, and Sofie knows this, so she's strictly against killing.

Sofie would also be able to free Pilot, at which point he would reveal himself to be a minor noble of the Elemental Plane of Air. If the party does not probe further, he would leave and never be seen again. Hunters from the City of Brass would track him down and slay him, which they would learn from the merchant they bought their eternal wands of prestidigitation from the next time they meet him, who is a distant relative of a high-up in the City of Brass.

If the party probes into his circumstances, they would learn that he was imprisoned by the Grand Sultan of the Elemental Plane of Fire as a prisoner of war. His identity was stripped magically and he was sold to a visiting trader (Teru) as a slave, as punishment. They would not forgive him easily, and this would have been a side adventure to try to settle affairs. While the City of Brass is a capital-E Evil land, while Pilot is no worse than Chaotic Neutral, there is a complication as he is implicated in the killing of efreet civilians and noncombatants during a raid (who are still unquestionably Evil in nature). This makes the discussion of justice for him complex.

Sofie would direct the players to the rest of Teru's fleet. He was managing an aeronautical trading empire, after all. The party would readily find documents regarding his activities and worlds where notable disasters were happening. The second act of this adventure was going to be the party chasing down these disasters, wrapping back to the invasion of the Far Realms premise.

Instead, while the party finds these, the party also finds Teru's mountains of notes and journals on the Noctuary, including credible discussions of its supposed powers of granting impossible wishes, and speculations thereafter about how the Noctuary ties into ending the threat of the Far Realms. Importantly, Delja doesn't particularly like Sofie, so she convinces Ux not to notify Sofie about the Noctuary.

Does anything in this sequence of events bother you guys? We can change things as needed until what happened fits Ux and Delja's characters to a T. What do Ux and Delja do about the Sauvais daughter and her retinue in the Twelve Factols, fight or work to help eliminate the serial killer? Would Ux and Delja tell Sofie about Teru? Depending on how much on the Teru matter they tell Sofie, they may or may not have learned the tightrope they'd have to navigate to do it cleanly. Would Ux and Delja try to negotiate peace with the City of Brass (Evil), convince Pilot to go into hiding in Sigil forever while slaying all his efreet pursuers when they pop up, or what?