There is the sound of a distant explosion above you, showering your party with small fragments of mortar and stone. A jet of flame and smoke burst from the vent through which HELIOS carrying Ryloos had fallen - the path is destroyed. As you help to disentangle Ryloos from the snare, you find yourselves trapped once again in the reservoir.
Unfortunately, your knowledge of the reservoirs is rapidly running thin, Ryloos, With the two exits to the gatehouse destroyed, you rack your brain in an attempt to recall another means out. If memory serves, the reservoir essentially undermines the entire city, like a giant lake, with occasional pneumatic tubes and pressured piping running up into the city above and drains leading back down below. As you think on it, you recall that the river Ogma runs through the heart of the city before draining into a complex series of channels and sieves that utilize its great current to provide running water and power to Cionn tSáile. Heading toward the city center will improve the likelihood that you will find some means of escaping the reservoir, but will also take you some distance from the gatehouse.
You feel that your team may want to reassess their collective priorities.
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
"Saints alive!" The sergeant brushes chunks of ancient plaster from his mustache. "To be honest soldiers, I wasn't expecting quite so many explosions, but take heart. We are re-united, and I'm sure Ryloos can get us out of here." Lofty wades over to the first passage where the steam had forced them to run and inspects the rubble.
Perception - 18
I'm looking to see how much rubble we'd have to clear to get through here
You study the first entrance. Wafts of superheated steam occasionally drip through the rubble of the destroyed gate. Not only do you anticipate difficulty in clearing the rubble (considering it is approximately 12 feet off the ground, in the ceiling), but you also worry about the potential react your skin and bones might have in response to the boiling water vapor.
Both paths are blocked, something that I hadn't intended. You can venture further into the reservoir beneath the city, which may take you closer to the throne - and, by extension, Isidore - but further from your assigned duties. Alternatively, you could follow the current back out of the city and seek another path back inside, though that path is largely recursive.
Ryloos furiously throws the netting off of her after much struggling. She looks around frantically, confused on what happened exactly and why she is drenched. Ryloos didn't see Helios grab the netting and throw her down the drain but she is glad he did. "This ******* thing keeps surprising me," she thinks to herself about Helios. She look around. Back in the sewers...seeing that the path they came originally is blocked with rubble and the path she was not so carefully throw down is also blocked. She recalls the sewers. Where they lead, where they might go, where she wants to go. She is also aware of what else might be down here with them. She notices that there is no body of whatever beast assailed Buoyside here btu maybe it's submerged in water.
"There are more exits to the surface. The river runs below the city with the easiest access to the surface being the city center. We'll be a little farther from the gatehouse but it's the easiest access point. Or we could try our luck with more drains.."
After some hushed discussions - your whispered voices echoing emptily in the silent, sepulchral silence of the reservoir - your team elects to push forward toward the heart of the city. After the preceding ambush by the glass gator and your near escape from the water monster, your journey is slow, cautious, and tense. Each water-laden step reverberates in the huge space, causing your party to wince and jump on more than one occasion, nervous eyes studying the hidden spaces behind the pillars, in the shadows. But your progress is unmolested and otherwise uneventful.
BUOYSIDE
You can feel your master clinging to the extreme periphery of the reservoir, well outside of the vision and senses of the party. It is almost back to full strength though you note the faintest color of doubt spoiling its will, the beast questioning its ability to contend with the party. There are other, darker spaces in the city where great heavy things have come to settle in its recesses, horrid formless entities given perverse corporeality for the first time. Though their power far eclipses the brilliance of your angelic sponsor, the nihileth is clever and realizes their utility as distractions...or potential ends to a mean. The board is set, the die cast, the pieces already in motion. How grand the game that your master plays. It brings a smile to your tired face.
ALL
After some time, you finally come across another grate, miserable, paranoid, exhausted, and sodden (or, if you are HELIOS, just a wet machine). This grate is set much more distantly in the ceiling, recessed in a cylindrical hole, with a telescoping ladder bolted to the the side of its passage. After a couple of carefully thrown stones from the hands of HELIOS and Ryloos - Xantlin and Lofty sheepishly making excuses so as not to further embarrass themselves, Buoyside standing somewhat apart and appearing utterly disinterested - the ladder comes crashing down and your party ascends. After moving a heavy manhole cover, you find yourself standing on the streets of Cionn tSáile, perhaps the first mortals to do so in over 100 years. Much to your surprise, the fog has lightened immensely, affording you ample view of the surrounding city. Cionn tSáile is, for the most part, untouched; the shining fulcrum that an entire continent once balanced on, its architecture grand and sweeping and cold and silent.
Some buildings evince signs of destruction, of a brief battle, but you are still somewhat humbled by the largely unmarred grandeur of the city.
You are close now to the Lia Fáil, the site of Isidore's throne. In a fascinating gesture, Isidore had placed his throne in an unroofed structure, the mighty river Ogma split and channeled to flow on either side of his seat and down the grand stairway. The stairs lay before you, broad - nearly half a kilometer in width - with a gentle acclivity, an extension of the storied White Road of Cionn tSáile ending at the foot of its king's throne. On either side, the thundering waters of the river Ogma stream past only to disappear into a series of channels and sluices, its kinetic energy used to power the many marvels of the crown city.
It is nearly a full kilometer climb to the Lia Fáil. Your cloaks blow in the warm breeze as. Much to your consternation, occasional fat, snowflakes fall to dust your shoulders and hair in stark contrast to the otherwise summery clime. Something portentous awaits at the Lia Fáil; you feel it in your tired muscles and aching joints.
Again, except for HELIOS. All he feels is a sense of duty and a somewhat perfunctory inquiry about why the meat bags are always standing about and staring at things with such ponderous, emotion-laden gravity. Lighten up, meat bags, you are almost tempted to say. Almost.
The Lia Fáil and Isidore's throne will be the end of the "tutorial," if you will. Things'll open up after that.
"Wusses, our approach to the throne feels ominous, but we are safe where we stand. We should prepare now for whatever may face us at the top. Have a seat, this will only take a few minutes." Xantlin clutches his amulet and closes his eyes, murmuring under his breath.
I'm way too lazy to look, but assume we've all been hurt at least a little bit at some point. Casting Prayer of Healing - everyone healed for 11
Xantlin is happy to continue healing if we wanted to get up to full health before what seems likely to be a big fight. He's still pissed at Bouyside though so probably won't heal him
Buoyside looks upon the structure with boredom. Big stones that hold people, how grand. It does not compare to the labyrinthine mind of the master, constantly churning, adapting, expanding. This is just a dead land.
He plops down directly onto his ass, not bothering to gently lower himself into sitting. He looks to the others, his face often shifting between a warm smile, a cocky grin and pure abhorrence for them and their surroundings. He slides the sheathe down his blade a few inches and rubs his thumb against it repeatedly, spilling blood. It's unclear if he's aware he's even doing it, or if he's truly just so bored.
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
Ryloos is on hallowed ground. She never stood so closely to the throne before, always peering at it from far away through obstructed views. She feels an immense warmth come over as Xantlin's healing powers take hold.
"This..this is amazing. We stand where Isidore once did. Where he governed. Where he ruled," Ryloos says quietly aloud. She feels great reverie reminiscing on her unruly childhood of running through the streets, stealing what she could, besting people who couldn't be bested; all with her only companion, the orphan boy, with her every stride. All kind feelings for the king who decided to toil with what lay beneath the city fades to deep bitterness. She is home and she has not forgotten why she came back.
Ryloos goes to climb the nearest tallest structure. Although many taller buildings lie between her and the gatehouse, she can picture the structures that lie between them and the gatehouse.
"We're roughly 300 yards from the gatehouse as the crow flies," Ryloos yells down to her companions. While standing atop the structure, Ryloos closes her eyes and opens her ears. Scents the air.
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
A string of rotten luck. The busted pipe, the beast, the mechanical men, the explosions. Everything had gone wrong and yet, here they were. Closer to the heart of this accursed city than anyone could have predicted they would get.
Perhaps there was more to it. Those saints out there proved that the gods were watching this day. Though the thought chilled him to the bone, Lofty wondered whether or not they had been manipulated. Carefully positioned by some divine will to be here, now, at the heart of things.
Lofty glances over at Helios. Pelor? The mechanical man had certainly proven himself a force to be reckoned with but Pelor didn't strike him as a particularly cunning or manipulative god. Bahamut on the other hand seemed more plausible, but he'd known Xantlin for years. He was a solid soldier, a friend even, but a divine champion? That left Bouyside. Lofty had no idea what force worked through that one, what had torn his psyche in two, but it terrified him.
"Bouyside?" Noticing a thin trail of blood running down the man's arm, Lofty approaches and boots the end of the scabbard, forcing it back up the blade. "Are you quite alright soldier? You've been acting strange-r. Stranger than usual." Lofty leans in close and stares at Bouyside. "Did that thing hit you on the head or something?"
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
HELIOS stands staring staring down the only path deeper into the sewers. "It would be inefficient to go back now when we have come so far, this is the only way for us to proceed now. On your word Sargeant."
As he reaches over his shoulder to grab at where his beloved bagpipes should be so he can attempt to lighten the mood with a beautiful tune his hands meets nothing but his own shoulder plate. That's okay HELIOS thinks to himself. I have played and heard the notes enough to verbally mimic them. That will surely diffuse the tension in the room until it is time to proceed.
HELIOS does his best bagpipe impression never turning his gaze from the path ahead.
Performance check (giving myself disadvantage because I don't actually have the bagpipes) -8
The nostalgia is overwhelming. It hangs in the air, running in rivulets down the silent stone and diffident mortar to collect into streams at your feet, bittersweet currents tugging at your memory. You climb the nearest wall - half-shattered from a blow of immense force - and peer out into the city, looking for an answer. The city, however, remains mute, its secrets held tight to its breast. For your past lingers here, and it sees through your façade; its knows you intimately for the thief - the scum - you ineluctably are. You are glad the others cannot perceive your guilty thoughts before they fade.
LOFTY
You grow near Buoyside's face, studying it carefully. He looks at you, the expression in his eyes wandering between psychotic glee and murderous rage. So...just another Tuesday. His visage is impervious to your scrutiny and, after a few moments of intense study, you back away, hands raised in defeat. Buoyside, feel free to react however you want - Lofty failed the insight check.
XANTLIN
A faint whispered chanting follows you where you walk, your words coalescing into floating glyphs of power that hover and dance in the air about you, elaborate pentagrams and coronae forming and reforming between them. Faint tendrils of light leak from the vertices, radiant radii emanating from the corners of reality to touch your companions. Their wounds are unmade, skin restitching itself, nerves reannealing, large ecchymoses fading quickly. Your piety gives you a solemn elegance and ineffable grace.
That is, until HELIOS attempts to emulate his bagpipe.
HELIOS
You pantomime playing a bagpipe, your mechanical apertures shrinking and expanding in rapid synchrony in an attempt to mimic the pitch and timbre of your instrument. It is bad. Indescribably so.
So bad that it counts as a psychic, unarmed attack on your party.
Everyone in the party takes 8 damage except for Ryloos, who takes an additional (1d10) 7 after falling from the wall on which she was standing. She is now concussed.
The din utterly spoils Xantlin's stoic reverence, causing the elf to collapse to its knees. His glyphs involuting and unwinding chaotically, Xantlin finds it impossible to focus his will under this aural assault. The cacophony is heinous.
Lofty's eyes water and he develops a piercing, hemiplegic migraine.
Buoyside's nose begins to bleed. He is otherwise unfazed.
BUOYSIDE
You feel a great trepidation about approaching the throne of Isidore. Your master senses a great...grayness, a nebulous nonentity there that interferes with the planes and distorts the Weft. It impels you - strongly - to avoid going there. After all, something wicked your way comes. Something dark and oh so heavy. And when it arrives, your master will grace you once again with its brilliant light. You see it in the distance, glittering. It is the Tower and the Axle, the Vine and the Press.
Ryloos looks at Helios as his cacophony of non-noise disrupts her concentration in a way she cannot describe.
"Never mind," Ryloos says to herself as she now consumed with aggravation for the machine. Ryloos sits down atop the structure she stands and takes off her boots to empty the water that has entered them during her time in the sewers. She sets her boots aside and pulls out her rapier and her whetstone. Luckily it had gotten tangled in the ropes she was ensnared im and hefted down with her. She begins to run the whetstone down the blade, taking special care of the tip of the blade.
Ehhh felt a little weird writing "taking special care of the tip"......
Buoyside feels his brain buzzing, a deep electrical shock crashing through his skull and jolting his head sludge. For a brief moment, he believes he's been struck by lightning. All good, hell of a way to die, he thinks. He looks down and is disappointed to see his body isn't smoldering, and then he turns his gaze to the mechanical man and his truly painful tones.
Taking damage allows me to roll a saving throw to dislodge the water-fish from Buoyside's mind: (DC14) 23
Buoyside gasps, the messy glob of his brain and combating personalities splits once again, two personalities sliding comfortably back into their respective homes. He leaps to his feet, screaming. "It's not dead! I couldn't kill the thing by myself! I needed my team, I needed my friends! It was in my head, oh lord! My mind! It's still alive out there! Growing!" He staggers wildly in shock, disoriented, almost as if his very being needs to catch it's breath after coming up from whatever madness had been cast on him. He drops to his knees in front of his blade, unsheathing it and kissing it, not minding the blood it spills from his lips. I'm here. I'm back. I love you, Tony.
Xantlin watches in awe as Buoyside appears to split his mind in two. Or is it three? It's very confusing. Xantlin has heard legends of many different types and variations of mind control in his studies, but this is the first he's seen in person. The overwhelming curiosity to question Buoyside about the events leading to this situation must be quelled... for now. In the moment we are on the brink of something huge, something that could change the face of this war.
"If we're all prepared...", he coughs, shooting a look at Buoyside, "let us move forward to the throne. Sargent, are you ready?"
Lofty helps Bouyside to his feet with a reassuring but professional nod of the head before turning to answer Xantlin.
"Yes." He stands at attention to address his squad. "Between us and our objective lies an unknown evil. Men have lived long lives wondering what lurks in the heart of this accursed city and died without an answer. We're about to have that answer, and the information will be of vital importance."
Lofty removes his sash of rank, embroidered with the emblem of the 4th army and ties it to the end of one of his spears. "We are pursued, and what lies ahead may well surpass us, but know this." He drives the spear deep between two weathered stones, leaving a makeshift standard blowing in the breeze. "If our lives should end here, we shall make of it an ending worthy of legend."
Sergeant Lofty salutes his companions with pride in his eyes. "Squad, advance."
Chills with that last line. I suppose it's time to take the training wheels off. Godspeed, you handsome devils.
ALL
Dirty, tired, but filled with conviction at Lofty's words, your party moves forward towards Isidore's throne. Your muscles ache and burn as you ascend the great staircase leading to the Lia Fáil. You cannot help but dream of an end to this campaign - to this nightmare - and a chance for peace. For rest. For anything but more violence. Looking at one another, you see a mix of grim fatalism, faint hope, and stoic resolution. Also, you see a variety of scratches and burns and the occasional ruptured tympanic membrane.
The stairs are enormous, rising up several hundred feet from the city streets to the natural plateau on which the Lia Fáil was built. The same curious, warm snow begins to fall again. It does not accumulate on your hair or armor, however, nor on the ground but instead sublimes near instantly on landing. The clouds overhead roil and seethe, a vivid display of purples and blues. It very much feels like the end of everything. Click here if you guys need some music to set the mood.
After several minutes of climbing, you pause to rest briefly. At that moment, Xantlin notices a large volume of bright red blood nearby, early clot beginning to form. Ryloos and Lofty study it and conclude that it was likely arterial, and spilled recently. Very recently. You follow the trail and come across one of the knight priestesses lying on the stairs, obscured by fog. The priestess is very clearly dead, a fatal volume of blood pooling on the stairs around her, her brilliant plate armor shattered and caved in, her arms bent unnaturally, longsword shattered. Her face, however, is peaceful, save for a few flecks of blood; even in death, she is preternaturally beautiful.
Several questions are immediately begotten in your mind: how did the warrior maiden get to the center of the city? What could have inflicted such dire wounds to a knight of such caliber and divine protection? Where is the Sixth Saint Alythsia and the remainder of her retinue? You ponder these questions for a time before progressing onwards. Not long afterwards, you come across the corpse of a second knight priestess killed in a similarly brutal fashion. If you recall correctly, the Sixth Saint traveled with seven warriors in her train; you cannot help but feel discouraged that two of these mighty warriors have seemingly fallen. You move on, Lofty pausing briefly to close the young woman's dead, staring eyes, a single tear falling from his cheek.
You grow near the Lia Fáil. The stairs narrow in diameter at their apex, opening on a small, flat piazza. From there, an elaborate gateway outlines the entrance to Isidore's throne. The piazza shows signs of an intense struggle: a third warrior priestess has been brutalized beyond recognition, her blood strewn in wild and eccentric patterns suggesting a pitched battle; nearby, fourth maiden hangs limply, impaled on her own longsword into the stone wall of the gatehouse, the surrounding stone shattered by the force of the impact. The gate itself has been forced open, one of its 18 foot high, two ton metal doors dislodged from its hinges, blood spattering its cold, smooth face. Past it, a narrow corridor - the storied Passage of Kings - leads to the Lia Fáil, the throne of Isidore.
I'll give you guys a chance to react, roleplay, and prepare (to whatever extent you can) before entering the throne room. Entering the throne room will end the beginning chapter of the game.
Buoyside lags behind the group, eyes darting about with every speck of mysterious snow that falls in his periphery. He's on edge, the odd creature that invaded his mind is still out there and nobody seems to care. That, combined with the fact this his best friends didn't seem to notice he was gone, or don't care that he's back, is quite simply a ****in' bummer to him. The sight of the murdered priestess' further brings him down. Perhaps he wishes his other could take over for a bit, for this empathic and loving side to slip into a deep sleep while the rude one boasts about like some boorish jester, hurling abuse every which way he can.
He's not sure why he does it, but when the others aren't looking his way he removes a handkerchief from his pocket and kneels next to the priestess. "I'm sorry," He whispers to the corpse before sopping up some of the blood and gristle, cupping some of the jelly-ish bits up into the rag and folding it into a neat package, placing it back into his pocket. He rejoins the group, sitting down and sighing.
"Do you guys hate me?" He asks, practically begging for reassurance.
"Bouyside, you're our brother. You know better than most that hate comes and goes, but we share something stronger." Sergeant Lofty looks Bouyside dead in the eyes. "I would die for you." The statement typically reserved for flowery rhetoric, spoken plainly in this awful place is no longer a figure of speech. "But enough of that, if the other Bouyside could hear us his eyes would roll out of his head."
Lofty opens his third eye. He doesn't enjoy doing it. The things he sees when exposed to the world of the arcane leave him feeling very small and confused, but such sensitivity has it's tactical advantages. Casting detect magic, do I sense anything abominably powerful nearby?
You open yourself to the Weft, your psyche gently probing its surroundings for evidence of strong perturbations. The entirety of Cionn tSáile is suffused with magic, old and rich and smelling faintly of cinnamon; the pervasion of strong magics makes detection aberrations or abnormalities somewhat more difficult. As your metacorporeality reaches out toward the throne room, however, you stumble into an immense grayness, a hole in the Weft so dense and profound that the absence of magic stuns you. You are suspended in an elision, the warmth of the Weft - flowing through all life, through all things - severed, immersed in a space of intense cold and stillness. The shock is so severe that it affects your physical self, paralyzing your diaphragm. You drop to your knees, gasping for air, the wind knocked out of you by the immensity of this void, this Nonentity.
Something is waiting in the throne room. Something of power so immense that it has utterly nullified all magics in its vicinity and has abrogated the Weft.
Overhead, the clouds churn angrily. The sun briefly peers through, its color pale and wan.
ALL
Does seem a bit suspect that none of you reacted to Buoyside's return to himself. Do you hate him?
Ryloos ascends the stairs along with the other members of her party. She stares openly at the first priestess knight with terrified eyes. She can only muster side-eye glances at the other fallen priestesses. She can barely stomach the scene atop the stairs. She glances from pale, lifeless face to pale, lifeless face. It overwhelms her plus coupled with the nauseating pounding in her head, she vomits.
Wiping her mouth, she looks at Lofty attempting to catch his breath and then the rest of her companions; she finds no comfort. She gets the sense that what lies ahead will be much worse than what they have faced thus far. She remembers the corrupted health potion Lofty had given her at the onset of their journey. She retrieves it and swallows it whole.
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ALL, REUNITED
There is the sound of a distant explosion above you, showering your party with small fragments of mortar and stone. A jet of flame and smoke burst from the vent through which HELIOS carrying Ryloos had fallen - the path is destroyed. As you help to disentangle Ryloos from the snare, you find yourselves trapped once again in the reservoir.
Unfortunately, your knowledge of the reservoirs is rapidly running thin, Ryloos, With the two exits to the gatehouse destroyed, you rack your brain in an attempt to recall another means out. If memory serves, the reservoir essentially undermines the entire city, like a giant lake, with occasional pneumatic tubes and pressured piping running up into the city above and drains leading back down below. As you think on it, you recall that the river Ogma runs through the heart of the city before draining into a complex series of channels and sieves that utilize its great current to provide running water and power to Cionn tSáile. Heading toward the city center will improve the likelihood that you will find some means of escaping the reservoir, but will also take you some distance from the gatehouse.
You feel that your team may want to reassess their collective priorities.
"Saints alive!" The sergeant brushes chunks of ancient plaster from his mustache. "To be honest soldiers, I wasn't expecting quite so many explosions, but take heart. We are re-united, and I'm sure Ryloos can get us out of here." Lofty wades over to the first passage where the steam had forced them to run and inspects the rubble.
Perception - 18
I'm looking to see how much rubble we'd have to clear to get through here
Character Sheets: Page1 Page2 Page3
HP: 35 AC: 20 Saves: Str+2 Dex+0 Con+4 Int+2 Wis+2 Cha+6
LOFTY
You study the first entrance. Wafts of superheated steam occasionally drip through the rubble of the destroyed gate. Not only do you anticipate difficulty in clearing the rubble (considering it is approximately 12 feet off the ground, in the ceiling), but you also worry about the potential react your skin and bones might have in response to the boiling water vapor.
Both paths are blocked, something that I hadn't intended. You can venture further into the reservoir beneath the city, which may take you closer to the throne - and, by extension, Isidore - but further from your assigned duties. Alternatively, you could follow the current back out of the city and seek another path back inside, though that path is largely recursive.
Ryloos furiously throws the netting off of her after much struggling. She looks around frantically, confused on what happened exactly and why she is drenched. Ryloos didn't see Helios grab the netting and throw her down the drain but she is glad he did. "This ******* thing keeps surprising me," she thinks to herself about Helios. She look around. Back in the sewers...seeing that the path they came originally is blocked with rubble and the path she was not so carefully throw down is also blocked. She recalls the sewers. Where they lead, where they might go, where she wants to go. She is also aware of what else might be down here with them. She notices that there is no body of whatever beast assailed Buoyside here btu maybe it's submerged in water.
"There are more exits to the surface. The river runs below the city with the easiest access to the surface being the city center. We'll be a little farther from the gatehouse but it's the easiest access point. Or we could try our luck with more drains.."
ALL
After some hushed discussions - your whispered voices echoing emptily in the silent, sepulchral silence of the reservoir - your team elects to push forward toward the heart of the city. After the preceding ambush by the glass gator and your near escape from the water monster, your journey is slow, cautious, and tense. Each water-laden step reverberates in the huge space, causing your party to wince and jump on more than one occasion, nervous eyes studying the hidden spaces behind the pillars, in the shadows. But your progress is unmolested and otherwise uneventful.
BUOYSIDE
You can feel your master clinging to the extreme periphery of the reservoir, well outside of the vision and senses of the party. It is almost back to full strength though you note the faintest color of doubt spoiling its will, the beast questioning its ability to contend with the party. There are other, darker spaces in the city where great heavy things have come to settle in its recesses, horrid formless entities given perverse corporeality for the first time. Though their power far eclipses the brilliance of your angelic sponsor, the nihileth is clever and realizes their utility as distractions...or potential ends to a mean. The board is set, the die cast, the pieces already in motion. How grand the game that your master plays. It brings a smile to your tired face.
ALL
After some time, you finally come across another grate, miserable, paranoid, exhausted, and sodden (or, if you are HELIOS, just a wet machine). This grate is set much more distantly in the ceiling, recessed in a cylindrical hole, with a telescoping ladder bolted to the the side of its passage. After a couple of carefully thrown stones from the hands of HELIOS and Ryloos - Xantlin and Lofty sheepishly making excuses so as not to further embarrass themselves, Buoyside standing somewhat apart and appearing utterly disinterested - the ladder comes crashing down and your party ascends. After moving a heavy manhole cover, you find yourself standing on the streets of Cionn tSáile, perhaps the first mortals to do so in over 100 years. Much to your surprise, the fog has lightened immensely, affording you ample view of the surrounding city. Cionn tSáile is, for the most part, untouched; the shining fulcrum that an entire continent once balanced on, its architecture grand and sweeping and cold and silent.
Some buildings evince signs of destruction, of a brief battle, but you are still somewhat humbled by the largely unmarred grandeur of the city.
You are close now to the Lia Fáil, the site of Isidore's throne. In a fascinating gesture, Isidore had placed his throne in an unroofed structure, the mighty river Ogma split and channeled to flow on either side of his seat and down the grand stairway. The stairs lay before you, broad - nearly half a kilometer in width - with a gentle acclivity, an extension of the storied White Road of Cionn tSáile ending at the foot of its king's throne. On either side, the thundering waters of the river Ogma stream past only to disappear into a series of channels and sluices, its kinetic energy used to power the many marvels of the crown city.
It is nearly a full kilometer climb to the Lia Fáil. Your cloaks blow in the warm breeze as. Much to your consternation, occasional fat, snowflakes fall to dust your shoulders and hair in stark contrast to the otherwise summery clime. Something portentous awaits at the Lia Fáil; you feel it in your tired muscles and aching joints.
Again, except for HELIOS. All he feels is a sense of duty and a somewhat perfunctory inquiry about why the meat bags are always standing about and staring at things with such ponderous, emotion-laden gravity. Lighten up, meat bags, you are almost tempted to say. Almost.
The Lia Fáil and Isidore's throne will be the end of the "tutorial," if you will. Things'll open up after that.
"Wusses, our approach to the throne feels ominous, but we are safe where we stand. We should prepare now for whatever may face us at the top. Have a seat, this will only take a few minutes." Xantlin clutches his amulet and closes his eyes, murmuring under his breath.
I'm way too lazy to look, but assume we've all been hurt at least a little bit at some point. Casting Prayer of Healing - everyone healed for 11
Xantlin is happy to continue healing if we wanted to get up to full health before what seems likely to be a big fight. He's still pissed at Bouyside though so probably won't heal him
Xantlin Pegason (imgur)
33/33 HP
4/4 level 1 spells, 3/3 level 2 spells, 2/2 level 3 spells
AC = 15, Spell attack bonus = 7, spell save DC = 15
Buoyside looks upon the structure with boredom. Big stones that hold people, how grand. It does not compare to the labyrinthine mind of the master, constantly churning, adapting, expanding. This is just a dead land.
He plops down directly onto his ass, not bothering to gently lower himself into sitting. He looks to the others, his face often shifting between a warm smile, a cocky grin and pure abhorrence for them and their surroundings. He slides the sheathe down his blade a few inches and rubs his thumb against it repeatedly, spilling blood. It's unclear if he's aware he's even doing it, or if he's truly just so bored.
Character Sheet
AC: 16
Ryloos is on hallowed ground. She never stood so closely to the throne before, always peering at it from far away through obstructed views. She feels an immense warmth come over as Xantlin's healing powers take hold.
"This..this is amazing. We stand where Isidore once did. Where he governed. Where he ruled," Ryloos says quietly aloud. She feels great reverie reminiscing on her unruly childhood of running through the streets, stealing what she could, besting people who couldn't be bested; all with her only companion, the orphan boy, with her every stride. All kind feelings for the king who decided to toil with what lay beneath the city fades to deep bitterness. She is home and she has not forgotten why she came back.
Ryloos goes to climb the nearest tallest structure. Although many taller buildings lie between her and the gatehouse, she can picture the structures that lie between them and the gatehouse.
"We're roughly 300 yards from the gatehouse as the crow flies," Ryloos yells down to her companions. While standing atop the structure, Ryloos closes her eyes and opens her ears. Scents the air.
Perception check- 9
A string of rotten luck. The busted pipe, the beast, the mechanical men, the explosions. Everything had gone wrong and yet, here they were. Closer to the heart of this accursed city than anyone could have predicted they would get.
Perhaps there was more to it. Those saints out there proved that the gods were watching this day. Though the thought chilled him to the bone, Lofty wondered whether or not they had been manipulated. Carefully positioned by some divine will to be here, now, at the heart of things.
Lofty glances over at Helios. Pelor? The mechanical man had certainly proven himself a force to be reckoned with but Pelor didn't strike him as a particularly cunning or manipulative god. Bahamut on the other hand seemed more plausible, but he'd known Xantlin for years. He was a solid soldier, a friend even, but a divine champion? That left Bouyside. Lofty had no idea what force worked through that one, what had torn his psyche in two, but it terrified him.
"Bouyside?" Noticing a thin trail of blood running down the man's arm, Lofty approaches and boots the end of the scabbard, forcing it back up the blade. "Are you quite alright soldier? You've been acting strange-r. Stranger than usual." Lofty leans in close and stares at Bouyside. "Did that thing hit you on the head or something?"
Insight check 14
Character Sheets: Page1 Page2 Page3
HP: 35 AC: 20 Saves: Str+2 Dex+0 Con+4 Int+2 Wis+2 Cha+6
HELIOS stands staring staring down the only path deeper into the sewers. "It would be inefficient to go back now when we have come so far, this is the only way for us to proceed now. On your word Sargeant."
As he reaches over his shoulder to grab at where his beloved bagpipes should be so he can attempt to lighten the mood with a beautiful tune his hands meets nothing but his own shoulder plate. That's okay HELIOS thinks to himself. I have played and heard the notes enough to verbally mimic them. That will surely diffuse the tension in the room until it is time to proceed.
HELIOS does his best bagpipe impression never turning his gaze from the path ahead.
Performance check (giving myself disadvantage because I don't actually have the bagpipes) -8
H.E.L.I.O.S - Warforged Sun Soul Monk
AC - 19
RYLOOS
The nostalgia is overwhelming. It hangs in the air, running in rivulets down the silent stone and diffident mortar to collect into streams at your feet, bittersweet currents tugging at your memory. You climb the nearest wall - half-shattered from a blow of immense force - and peer out into the city, looking for an answer. The city, however, remains mute, its secrets held tight to its breast. For your past lingers here, and it sees through your façade; its knows you intimately for the thief - the scum - you ineluctably are. You are glad the others cannot perceive your guilty thoughts before they fade.
LOFTY
You grow near Buoyside's face, studying it carefully. He looks at you, the expression in his eyes wandering between psychotic glee and murderous rage. So...just another Tuesday. His visage is impervious to your scrutiny and, after a few moments of intense study, you back away, hands raised in defeat. Buoyside, feel free to react however you want - Lofty failed the insight check.
XANTLIN
A faint whispered chanting follows you where you walk, your words coalescing into floating glyphs of power that hover and dance in the air about you, elaborate pentagrams and coronae forming and reforming between them. Faint tendrils of light leak from the vertices, radiant radii emanating from the corners of reality to touch your companions. Their wounds are unmade, skin restitching itself, nerves reannealing, large ecchymoses fading quickly. Your piety gives you a solemn elegance and ineffable grace.
That is, until HELIOS attempts to emulate his bagpipe.
HELIOS
You pantomime playing a bagpipe, your mechanical apertures shrinking and expanding in rapid synchrony in an attempt to mimic the pitch and timbre of your instrument. It is bad. Indescribably so.
So bad that it counts as a psychic, unarmed attack on your party.
HELIOS' inadvertent attack (1d6+5) 8
Everyone in the party takes 8 damage except for Ryloos, who takes an additional (1d10) 7 after falling from the wall on which she was standing. She is now concussed.
The din utterly spoils Xantlin's stoic reverence, causing the elf to collapse to its knees. His glyphs involuting and unwinding chaotically, Xantlin finds it impossible to focus his will under this aural assault. The cacophony is heinous.
Lofty's eyes water and he develops a piercing, hemiplegic migraine.
Buoyside's nose begins to bleed. He is otherwise unfazed.
BUOYSIDE
You feel a great trepidation about approaching the throne of Isidore. Your master senses a great...grayness, a nebulous nonentity there that interferes with the planes and distorts the Weft. It impels you - strongly - to avoid going there. After all, something wicked your way comes. Something dark and oh so heavy. And when it arrives, your master will grace you once again with its brilliant light. You see it in the distance, glittering. It is the Tower and the Axle, the Vine and the Press.
Ryloos looks at Helios as his cacophony of non-noise disrupts her concentration in a way she cannot describe.
"Never mind," Ryloos says to herself as she now consumed with aggravation for the machine. Ryloos sits down atop the structure she stands and takes off her boots to empty the water that has entered them during her time in the sewers. She sets her boots aside and pulls out her rapier and her whetstone. Luckily it had gotten tangled in the ropes she was ensnared im and hefted down with her. She begins to run the whetstone down the blade, taking special care of the tip of the blade.
Ehhh felt a little weird writing "taking special care of the tip"......
Buoyside feels his brain buzzing, a deep electrical shock crashing through his skull and jolting his head sludge. For a brief moment, he believes he's been struck by lightning. All good, hell of a way to die, he thinks. He looks down and is disappointed to see his body isn't smoldering, and then he turns his gaze to the mechanical man and his truly painful tones.
Taking damage allows me to roll a saving throw to dislodge the water-fish from Buoyside's mind: (DC14) 23
Buoyside gasps, the messy glob of his brain and combating personalities splits once again, two personalities sliding comfortably back into their respective homes. He leaps to his feet, screaming. "It's not dead! I couldn't kill the thing by myself! I needed my team, I needed my friends! It was in my head, oh lord! My mind! It's still alive out there! Growing!" He staggers wildly in shock, disoriented, almost as if his very being needs to catch it's breath after coming up from whatever madness had been cast on him. He drops to his knees in front of his blade, unsheathing it and kissing it, not minding the blood it spills from his lips. I'm here. I'm back. I love you, Tony.
Character Sheet
AC: 16
Tony....? Seriously?
Xantlin watches in awe as Buoyside appears to split his mind in two. Or is it three? It's very confusing. Xantlin has heard legends of many different types and variations of mind control in his studies, but this is the first he's seen in person. The overwhelming curiosity to question Buoyside about the events leading to this situation must be quelled... for now. In the moment we are on the brink of something huge, something that could change the face of this war.
"If we're all prepared...", he coughs, shooting a look at Buoyside, "let us move forward to the throne. Sargent, are you ready?"
Xantlin Pegason (imgur)
33/33 HP
4/4 level 1 spells, 3/3 level 2 spells, 2/2 level 3 spells
AC = 15, Spell attack bonus = 7, spell save DC = 15
Lofty helps Bouyside to his feet with a reassuring but professional nod of the head before turning to answer Xantlin.
"Yes." He stands at attention to address his squad. "Between us and our objective lies an unknown evil. Men have lived long lives wondering what lurks in the heart of this accursed city and died without an answer. We're about to have that answer, and the information will be of vital importance."
Lofty removes his sash of rank, embroidered with the emblem of the 4th army and ties it to the end of one of his spears. "We are pursued, and what lies ahead may well surpass us, but know this." He drives the spear deep between two weathered stones, leaving a makeshift standard blowing in the breeze. "If our lives should end here, we shall make of it an ending worthy of legend."
Sergeant Lofty salutes his companions with pride in his eyes. "Squad, advance."
Character Sheets: Page1 Page2 Page3
HP: 35 AC: 20 Saves: Str+2 Dex+0 Con+4 Int+2 Wis+2 Cha+6
Chills with that last line. I suppose it's time to take the training wheels off. Godspeed, you handsome devils.
ALL
Dirty, tired, but filled with conviction at Lofty's words, your party moves forward towards Isidore's throne. Your muscles ache and burn as you ascend the great staircase leading to the Lia Fáil. You cannot help but dream of an end to this campaign - to this nightmare - and a chance for peace. For rest. For anything but more violence. Looking at one another, you see a mix of grim fatalism, faint hope, and stoic resolution. Also, you see a variety of scratches and burns and the occasional ruptured tympanic membrane.
The stairs are enormous, rising up several hundred feet from the city streets to the natural plateau on which the Lia Fáil was built. The same curious, warm snow begins to fall again. It does not accumulate on your hair or armor, however, nor on the ground but instead sublimes near instantly on landing. The clouds overhead roil and seethe, a vivid display of purples and blues. It very much feels like the end of everything. Click here if you guys need some music to set the mood.
After several minutes of climbing, you pause to rest briefly. At that moment, Xantlin notices a large volume of bright red blood nearby, early clot beginning to form. Ryloos and Lofty study it and conclude that it was likely arterial, and spilled recently. Very recently. You follow the trail and come across one of the knight priestesses lying on the stairs, obscured by fog. The priestess is very clearly dead, a fatal volume of blood pooling on the stairs around her, her brilliant plate armor shattered and caved in, her arms bent unnaturally, longsword shattered. Her face, however, is peaceful, save for a few flecks of blood; even in death, she is preternaturally beautiful.
Several questions are immediately begotten in your mind: how did the warrior maiden get to the center of the city? What could have inflicted such dire wounds to a knight of such caliber and divine protection? Where is the Sixth Saint Alythsia and the remainder of her retinue? You ponder these questions for a time before progressing onwards. Not long afterwards, you come across the corpse of a second knight priestess killed in a similarly brutal fashion. If you recall correctly, the Sixth Saint traveled with seven warriors in her train; you cannot help but feel discouraged that two of these mighty warriors have seemingly fallen. You move on, Lofty pausing briefly to close the young woman's dead, staring eyes, a single tear falling from his cheek.
You grow near the Lia Fáil. The stairs narrow in diameter at their apex, opening on a small, flat piazza. From there, an elaborate gateway outlines the entrance to Isidore's throne. The piazza shows signs of an intense struggle: a third warrior priestess has been brutalized beyond recognition, her blood strewn in wild and eccentric patterns suggesting a pitched battle; nearby, fourth maiden hangs limply, impaled on her own longsword into the stone wall of the gatehouse, the surrounding stone shattered by the force of the impact. The gate itself has been forced open, one of its 18 foot high, two ton metal doors dislodged from its hinges, blood spattering its cold, smooth face. Past it, a narrow corridor - the storied Passage of Kings - leads to the Lia Fáil, the throne of Isidore.
I'll give you guys a chance to react, roleplay, and prepare (to whatever extent you can) before entering the throne room. Entering the throne room will end the beginning chapter of the game.
Buoyside lags behind the group, eyes darting about with every speck of mysterious snow that falls in his periphery. He's on edge, the odd creature that invaded his mind is still out there and nobody seems to care. That, combined with the fact this his best friends didn't seem to notice he was gone, or don't care that he's back, is quite simply a ****in' bummer to him. The sight of the murdered priestess' further brings him down. Perhaps he wishes his other could take over for a bit, for this empathic and loving side to slip into a deep sleep while the rude one boasts about like some boorish jester, hurling abuse every which way he can.
He's not sure why he does it, but when the others aren't looking his way he removes a handkerchief from his pocket and kneels next to the priestess. "I'm sorry," He whispers to the corpse before sopping up some of the blood and gristle, cupping some of the jelly-ish bits up into the rag and folding it into a neat package, placing it back into his pocket. He rejoins the group, sitting down and sighing.
"Do you guys hate me?" He asks, practically begging for reassurance.
Character Sheet
AC: 16
"Bouyside, you're our brother. You know better than most that hate comes and goes, but we share something stronger." Sergeant Lofty looks Bouyside dead in the eyes. "I would die for you." The statement typically reserved for flowery rhetoric, spoken plainly in this awful place is no longer a figure of speech. "But enough of that, if the other Bouyside could hear us his eyes would roll out of his head."
Lofty opens his third eye. He doesn't enjoy doing it. The things he sees when exposed to the world of the arcane leave him feeling very small and confused, but such sensitivity has it's tactical advantages. Casting detect magic, do I sense anything abominably powerful nearby?
Character Sheets: Page1 Page2 Page3
HP: 35 AC: 20 Saves: Str+2 Dex+0 Con+4 Int+2 Wis+2 Cha+6
LOFTY
You open yourself to the Weft, your psyche gently probing its surroundings for evidence of strong perturbations. The entirety of Cionn tSáile is suffused with magic, old and rich and smelling faintly of cinnamon; the pervasion of strong magics makes detection aberrations or abnormalities somewhat more difficult. As your metacorporeality reaches out toward the throne room, however, you stumble into an immense grayness, a hole in the Weft so dense and profound that the absence of magic stuns you. You are suspended in an elision, the warmth of the Weft - flowing through all life, through all things - severed, immersed in a space of intense cold and stillness. The shock is so severe that it affects your physical self, paralyzing your diaphragm. You drop to your knees, gasping for air, the wind knocked out of you by the immensity of this void, this Nonentity.
Something is waiting in the throne room. Something of power so immense that it has utterly nullified all magics in its vicinity and has abrogated the Weft.
Overhead, the clouds churn angrily. The sun briefly peers through, its color pale and wan.
ALL
Does seem a bit suspect that none of you reacted to Buoyside's return to himself. Do you hate him?
Ryloos ascends the stairs along with the other members of her party. She stares openly at the first priestess knight with terrified eyes. She can only muster side-eye glances at the other fallen priestesses. She can barely stomach the scene atop the stairs. She glances from pale, lifeless face to pale, lifeless face. It overwhelms her plus coupled with the nauseating pounding in her head, she vomits.
Wiping her mouth, she looks at Lofty attempting to catch his breath and then the rest of her companions; she finds no comfort. She gets the sense that what lies ahead will be much worse than what they have faced thus far. She remembers the corrupted health potion Lofty had given her at the onset of their journey. She retrieves it and swallows it whole.