The wounded were revived, and the situation assessed: the Sky Talon wasn't going to stay in "control" for long. The explosive warforged, now in pieces in the ship's hold, had successfully sabotaged it; the large Khyber dragonshard in the elemental binding room had been almost broken from its cradle and the machinery interfacing it it torn apart.Cypher, upon examining the device with his artificer skills, believed the binding would last only about 8 hours...and when the magic failed, the fire elemental bound to the airship would be loose.
The party talked about jumping ship with Xoma's feather fall spells, but Halbazar's attempt to communicate with the fire element only seemed to make things worse. The ship rose even higher and drifted closer to the mountains without smashing into them. Steering the ship to a safer place—such as the open plain—clearly wasn't in the cards. Instead, a straight drop down would touch even feather falling jumpers down on a precarious, icy slope halfway up the Seawall Mountains.
Wenrick, still tongueless but soldiering on, made gestures, pointed at maps, and wrote out his opinion on paper: He believed the Sky Talon, which seemed mostly under the control of the fire elemental at this point, was heading somewhere specific, following the contours of the mountain wall southward....and he thought that somewhere was Paluur Draal.
Paluur Draal is just one of the named ruins from the Dhakaani Empire, the goblin civilization that once ruled Khorvaire before the arrival of humanity. It was only noteworthy because it was one of the ruins on known maps. Its close proximity to the Zil city of Korranberg meant that it had probably already been explored numerous times. But perhaps there were still some mysteries to it.
So the PCs were content to wait and find out. Better that than jumping overboard early to a more certain slippery slope.
On the way, however, they had a visitor. A large, black, and decidedly unnatural eagle lit upon the stern of the ship. When the PCs went to approach it, it shapechanged into the form of a middle-aged human with an unpleasant expression in a rust-red cloak. He spoke calmly, and clearly identified himself as an ally of the cultists, though he did not give his name.The man said that he wasn't there to fight, that the time for swinging blades and slinging spells had passed. His window for using the Emperor's Key had passed—the PCs had successfully "foiled" him in this—but that he might yet have other opportunities in the future. He hoped they would hand over the Dhakaani talisman peacefully. This, he explained, would allow him to keep his allies—presumably the cultists and Drazul d'Tharashk, the half-orc—from bothering them any further, from pursuing them. He was sad to see this offer declined.
Then Cyzicus had enough of parley and attacked the man with his scimitar. With a flourish of magic, he turned invisible, accepted quite a few hits, and flew off into the night. According to Reltran ir'Harran, the Aundairian nobleman who owned the Sky Talon, this man was Avashad, his "mentor." But Reltran was still mentally absent for the most part and could not say more than a few vagaries.
A few hours later, the ruined city of Paluur Draal indeed came into view as the airship rounded the corner of one of southern mountains. Beneath the glow of six full moons, the city was fairly visible even in the dark of night. It had been built upon massive stone shelves in the side of the mountain, forming a series of tiers.
The Sky Talon descended swiftly, and the time had come to jump ship. With the use of three feather fall spells, and with most human-sized people holding onto gnomes, they managed, one by one, to leap overboard and descend swiftly, if magically, safe to the ground.
But not everyone landed on the weed-choked ground. Some, like Magnus, Cyzicus, and Rendar, landed upon twenty-foot columns sheered at the top like tall plinths. Worse: Dark winged shapes swooped down, taking advantage of their descent: gargoyles!
A battle ensued, and one of the gnomes was gored through the chest and flung from a column by one of the stony creatures. The two gargoyles were quickly slain with the combined efforts of the PCs, but there were clearly more of the monsters about. As bright as the moon-lit sky was, the ruins of Paluur Draal were still very dark, full of crumbled stones and thick foliage, and there were many places the creatures could be hiding.
Meanwhile, the PCs also spied torch lights somewhere along the edge of topmost tiers of the city. The airship itself fell out of sight, presumably crashing down somewhere in the next tier down. They could hear the smashing of rock and the flare of fire. But was the elemental still bound? Was the ship intact? What of the displacer beasts in the hold?
