Outta This World!

So, those tall freaky dudes turned out to be some sort of race who call themselves the "Irda" whatever that is. Anyway, they told us we needed to leave their island. We simply explained what leaving the island meant to us (certain death) and they found a way for us to leave without getting killed by our employers: They gated us to some other world! Grr...

So, anyway, we arrive on this other world in a huge grassland with mountains in one direction, ocean (?) in another (we didn't go that way, but there was a body of water) and a really, really tall black tower in a third. The fourth was just more grassland. What do we do? We walk toward the tower, of course!

Walk, walk, walk and more walk until we get tired and camp. The sun sets and comes back up less than 30 minutes later. Weird. Very weird. So we keep walking until the ground opens up under us and we start falling, falling onto a sticky net. The maw of that spider is large enough to swallow us whole, and I don't mean just one of us; I mean the whole party all at once!

Some friendly, but awfully quiet locals came to our rescue, but our fighter and our rogue foolishly refused rescue and were destroyed, and probably eaten, by that really enormous arachnid.  We get trooped off into a cave complex (whoa, there's an irony, eh?) and pointed toward the inn and the temple. 

It's at this point that we start learning a little about this world. Nobody goes to the surface except in the greatest of need. It's dangerous, they say. Nobody's ever heard of a rabbit or dear. They eat predominantly fungus (Yuck! Where's the meat?). Nobody has a sun tan. The local currency is in that entirely worthless metal: gold. Those of us who had good, steel coins find themselves pretty poor, indeed. Silk is super dirt cheap and is used for just about everything fabric GETS used for: clothes, curtains, flags, banners, tapestries, rope, harness, bags, backpacks, etc. They find linen, cotton and wool items interesting oddities, but of no other value. Leather, on the other hand, is likewise an oddity but, due it's toughness, has value for a number of applications and so its value is much inflated over what we're accustomed to.

A HUGE variety of different sentient racial templates live here, too. We've seen spider-men, dog-men, cat-men, bear-men, cricket-men, hu-men, bird-men, and more. How do they all get along so well? Apparently warfare is very small-scale stuff, little larger than inter-tribal skirmishes. There are no large nation-states. Instead, there are many city-states. Hmm.

Remember that tower? Apparently, it's the reason the surface is not safe. The locals claim it as the source of all evil. And we were going to just waltz right up and knock on the door!! Beyond that, nobody wants to talk about it. Again, hmm...

Interesting stuff, yes, but ultimately not important because we cannot readily capitalize on any of this information at this time. So three of us who still survive hire on as caravan guards and set off to another settlement through the tunnels ...