"Well, that looks poopy."

Joy stiffens as the unnatural wind tears through the mountain pass. Her eyes follow the others’ upward—toward the peak. Without a word, she turns and reaches for Ylis, placing a firm but gentle hand on the harengon’s shoulder as she subtly casts a spell.

“It sure does,” Joy agrees, giving a smile despite the fear climbing her throat. “But we can do this. I know it.”

((death ward on Ylis))

Ylis grabs the hand gently and rubs in on her cheek while looking up and smiling at Joy. 

"Aw thanks!" 

She wasn't sure what the blessing did  exactly, but the Paladins magic had never let her down.

Vazo'yn slows to a halt as the distant, inevitable tempest gathers above the mountain. His eyes follow the vortex down to where it meets the peak, knowing that its swirling chaos marks their final destination. A cold chill runs down his spine.

"The end draws near," he says quietly but with conviction.

"Our destiny lies ahead of us and we cannot fail. We must make our preparations."

He pulls an exquisitely crafted golden chalice from his pack, inlaid with myriad gems and precious stones. A prize from an epic adventure through the Shattered Teeth that hasn't yet happened. Or happened long ago.

"This chalice will fill our bellies and our hearts, steeling us against whatever challenge lies ahead. It may be our last peaceful hour," he says, looking to the others and hoping they will join him in a final meal.

Riven crouches low atop a half-buried boulder, ash coating his boots and the folds of his cloak. The wind is wrong, he feels it immediately. When it lifts Randa’s hair, pulling skyward instead of whipping sideways, his fingers tense around the hilt of the blade at his thigh.

He follows the vortex with narrowed eyes, catching the unnatural light that pulses in the churning heavens above. A storm, but not of this world. 

Riven steps down from the rock, landing with barely a sound, and approaches the group.

As he approaches, Vazo’yn produces the chalice, the ritualistic weight of the moment stays him. Riven tilts his head, considering. He does not often indulge in ceremony, his world is made of shadows and sharp things, not holy cups and shared meals. But this time......

He kneels before the chalice, eyes flicking briefly to the others, then back to the darkening skies.

Seeing the storm appear and grow, Giles will slow his enthusiastic pace and walk with the others.  At least the ones who aren't hiding and blending into the enviornment.

He tightens his fist wraps, "It is time."

DM: Please describe the possible last meal, my friend.

With the Fellowship gathering around him, in the heavily-accented elvish of his people, Vazo'yn begins to chant a whispered call to his ancestors. He thanks them for their years of wisdom and insight, words that have guided his steps through the long, winding path of his destiny. His melodic, hushed voice tells them of the epic tales the Fellowship have lived. With reverential fervour he describes the final task they are about to undertake together, and with deep respect, he asks his ancestors to protect them, body and heart, as they venture forth.

While he whispers his incantation, a light silvery mist rises in the chalice, its ethereal tendrils spilling over the golden, bejewelled rim and tumbling to the ground where it rolls outward to cover a small patch of the rocky earth around Vazo'yn. It roils lazily around the drow as it swells and rises, mist continuing to flow from the chalice. As the strange fog reaches to Vazo'yn's knees, the golden chalice and its gleaming jewels start to dull, their colour leeching out of them. Eventually the chalice becomes translucent itself, an ethereal golden cup in Vazo'yn's pale hands. Finally, as the incantation completes, the chalice dissolves into mist completely.

The fog that had swirled around Vazo'yn collapses and dissipates, wisps of mist dispersing among the Fellowship. Its disappearance reveals an impressive array of food and drink of all kinds. Each member of the Fellowship would see at least one of their favourite foods nestled amongst the myriad fruits, vegetables, meats, breads and pastries.

"Eat, friends," the drow says with an imploring gesture toward the feast in front of them.

"The last meal of the condemned?" The dark-haired man says with grin as he uncloaks himself, taking a seat by his favourite food. "This is delicious my friend..." He says to the drow as he starts tasting the offered food. "...can't remember when I had a meal quite like this, seems like ages ago." He says, scratching his head, the tiny blonde joining in to share in the feasting too. "I seem to recall a tale about the gourmand King Gluttonous the Last who wanted the lands greatest chef as his son-in-law, so he invited all the cooks from near and far to compete for his daughters hand..." He starts and goes on to tell a fairly entertaining and quite comical story with the gourmand king being tricked by a simple farmer who had outwitted a witch for her cauldron that could produce any food one desired.

Ylis looks at the food with wide eyes and claps her hands in glee. 

She gathers a double handful of fruit pastries and vegetable pies in her cloak and plops down to eat.

"MMMM!" Then with cheeks full and crumbs dropping down, "Fank Yoof!"

**OOC In the 2014 PHB either the explorer's pack or the dungeoneer's pack had a mess kit, which would have been a nice detail for this scene. It turns out 2024 has done away with the mess kit altogether. In another game, being able to gather items and liquids was a little important. 

Joy’s shoulders, heavy with the weight of what lay ahead, begin to ease as the rich scent of familiar food fills the air. Her eyes widen in gentle surprise as her gaze falls on a steaming bowl of vegetable stew, just like the one her mentor Joy—the original Joy—used to make on cold harvest nights. Beside it, a glass of strawberry cordial glistens in the mountain light, the scent taking her instantly back to simple, sunlit moments on the temple’s steps.

She sits cross-legged on the ground near the others, offering Vazo’yn a grateful smile as she cradles the bowl in her hands. “This…this is wonderful,” she says, voice quiet with awe. As Jack spins his tale and Ylis devours her feast with bright-eyed glee, Joy laughs—really laughs—and something in her relaxes at last. These people had become her family. Not by blood, not by time, but by fire and light and all the trials they had endured together. Her eyes glisten, but she blinks it away with another sip of cordial.

“May every last meal be shared with friends,” she murmurs warmly, raising her glass in a soft toast.

"Seafood Stew! Here! We'll I'll be, that's some impressive Magic" the dwarf says to the Elf. He tears off a chunk of dark bread and drops it in the stew. "So exciting, it's been a long time since I've had this. Are we even near water? Does you magic just pull fish from the ocean right into the stew?"

He looks around the table at the others enjoying their food and smiles.

"It comes from the ancestors," Vazo'yn explains of his magic and the food. It is a vague answer, but it is true and the best way the drow knows how to describe it.

He sits down crosslegged near one corner of the spread of food. He lifts a skewer of dark meat to his mouth and hungrily tears off a hearty mouthful. The meat is tender—or as tender as grilled mole-rat can be—and he savours the taste of home, enjoying Jack's grand tale.

"We have come such a long way together," he says after the story is finished.

"It has been a strange journey. A lifetime as a Fellowship, and yet no time at all. And now we have one final, great task to finish. I hope that once it is done, whatever happens, our tale lives on."

"Yes about that, if we have the chance we would try to reverse the effect I assume, to possibly save more people. I still can't understand anything about how all this works with the withering wind and us having adventured for many years and then ended up on the same path on this quest, but if we somehow succeeds in reversing the effect, would we go back in time again, would the dead return to the living, and would what we have done together never have happened?" Jack asks no one in particular, scratching his head again about the strangeness of it all. 

"And will the undead be undead again?" he adds, rubbing his left eye, the one he almost lost in the recent fight with the ancient Vampire, and gives a slight shudder.

"We'll if we don't undo it, I fear on our walk back, we maybe walking through quite a bit of empty villages. Bah, now I'm getting depressed, Another tale perhaps Jack?" the dwarf asks hopefully.

Randa ate in silence a nod to Vazo'yn in thanks and then a whispered thanks to the Ancestors. Memories mixed and drifted within her head of other meals and shared experiences and yet part of her felt as if she was in the presence of new acquaintances even as she recalled years of friendship and shared adversity.

She did not weigh in on the possibilties of their success, this was a primal force of incredible power......she had a distinct feeling this would be one adventure she would not return from.

Riven watches the mist, every instinct coiled tight beneath the practiced stillness of his form. Even in this moment of offered peace, his eyes flicker over the growing fog . But he says nothing.

Vazo’yn’s chant, heavy with weight and meaning, drifts across the ash-laced air like a prayer. Riven listens, unmoving. Not out of reverence. Out of recognition. He’s heard this kind of call before, though in far different lands, by far different men. Soldiers clinging to gods. Warlords naming ancestors before walking into battle.

He steps forward, his gaze skimming over the offerings. And then he sees it: a thin-cut roast of mountain stag, glazed in elderberry and charred at the edges.

For a heartbeat, he doesn’t move. Then he crouches low, drawing a long, curved knife, not to strike, but to cut.

“You called your ancestors,” he says, looking sidelong to Vazo’yn. “Let them watch. Let them bear witness. He rises, turns toward the path that winds toward the storm. “Because this is not just our final step. It is theirs, too. They walk with us.”

He nods to the others, a gesture uncharacteristically solemn. 

Then he vanishes once more, just a blur at the edge of their vision, moving uphill, scouting the path ahead.

Stealth: 21
Perception: 20

Riven's perceptiveness is rewarded with the image of a solitary monk walking down the path in the direction of the Fellowship. An elderly human man with a shaved head, silver eyebrows that stand up like their are two rows of small silver candle lights, and a thick, well-groomed gray beard that juts out in front of his face like the head of a spear. This is not a variety of monk that spends his time fawning over plants and harmless animals of the world, but the variety that spends his time assaulting stone blocks until they are dust. He walks with a straight back, eyes forward, but his hands are relaxed at his side and his eyes are kind. He acknowledges Riven's presence with a slight curl of his lips in a smile, though he continues passed Riven stalking in the forest as the monk confidently strides toward the feasting party.

He approaches the party with hands held apart at his shoulders. His hands and feet are wrapped in green, and he wears loose, white pants, a slim-fitting, purple silk vest, and a belt and holster with a heavy-looking blue and silver tome strapped to his hip. He does not appear to be armed.

"Greetings travelers. Might you have room for one more traveler at this fine feast?" His voice is soft, though self-assured.

Vazo'yn stands quickly at the stranger's approach. He is immediately suspicious of meeting anyone this close to the storm's eye, let alone someone seemingly so hale and hearty. His eyes search the monk for hints of the man's intentions.

"Greetings," he says cautiously, without welcoming the monk to their meal.

"We had thought ourselves the only travellers on this road. I am Vazo'yn," he says and leaves space for the man to introduce himself.

Insight: 16 (thanks for the 2 roll DDB!)

This man is very hard to read, though his friendliness does appear genuine. At least it appears genuine from this short exchange. The man halts his approach, tilts his head in a nod, and slightly raises his hands as if to draw attention to their harmless positioning.

"Hello Vazo'yn. I travel this road often. It does rarely see other travelers on it and seldom so many at once." He chuckles at apassing thought.