ZEITGEIST BSI: Bosum Strand Irregulars

[skotothalamos]

ObCon

The combined power of the Arc of Reida and the Navras Opera House went the constables’ minds across the sea to an island off the coast of Crisillyir. Alienor’s connection to her ancestor Amielle Latimer seemed to somehow be involved, as Alienor felt herself still aware of being Amielle’s ghost in present day. Before she could get her bearings, she was pulled away again, this time to inhabit a man by the unlikely name of Bruce McDruid, a pirate of sorts who was on his way to an Obscurati meeting.

Together with Bruce were Livia Hatsfield, an Obscurati spy in the Risuri government; Ken Don, a Crisillyiri librarian; Gran Guiscard, a singer who organized entertainers to spread Obscurati propaganda; and Oscan Ligurio, a Family snitch who did unsavory work that is better left unmentioned. Also on the boat were several Clergy members, a pair of unremarkable Obscurati members, and the Steelshaper himself, Leone Quital.

IronPeak had been drawn into the mind of Oscan; Summer was Gran; and Cazara was Livia. They traveled by ship and carriage to a run-down old mansion on a seemingly-abandoned island. Outside the mansion, they were met by Han Jierre, who greeted them with the practiced familiarity of a seventeenth-generation politician. Han thanked them all for making the journey, and said there would be a brief security sweep before continuing. Han’s assistant Bert produced a lantern (about the size of a pumpkin), into which he poured some special oil. When lit, the lantern’s purple light pulled everyone partway into the Bleak Gate, where they could see that the mansion was pristine and decorated for a party. Han handed out some rusted iron pendants to allow everyone to finish the transition into the Bleak Gate, and then the shadowlisk arrived.

The shadowlisk was a gigantic snake with stubby little legs and eyes that glowed like two miniature suns. As its eyesight passed over each of the travelers, they felt as though they would be burned, but only one of them was. A portly and pale clergy member suddenly became dark-skinned and athletic; the shadowlisk’s sight had burned away his illusory disguise. The snake-like beast grabbed the man and held him up as it burned him away almost entirely, leaving nothing but a twitching silhouette burned into the wall of the mansion.

As the other clergy members demanded answers, a quarter of ghosts came through the front door of the mansion. Among them were the ghosts of Reed MacBannin and Amielle Latimer. An ancient ghost named Vicemi introduced himself to the priests and croaked out the answer: the man was a spy; their fellow traveler had probably been killed some time ago. Meanwhile, Reed MacBannin’s ghost poured out a vial of blood on his hands, and then pulled the spy out of the wall by pulli gon his silhouette. Some guards took the man away to a dungeon. Reed MacBannin cheerfully noted that he’d be worried if there weren’t some spies trying to get in. He promised Han that he would find out whatever the man knew, and walked back inside. Amielle Latimer smiled at the door and said “Welcome to the Obscurati!”

The travelers moved into the mansion, where they saw faces familiar to the constables and to the people they were inhabiting. Lya Jierre was there, as were her brother Luc and his associate Ottavia Sacredotte. Former RHC Chief Inspector Margaret Saxby was in attendance as well. Livia was recognized by Risuri politician Catherine Romana, who was best known for proposing the “Dream Road” teleportation circuit in Risur. Gran met an excited fan, Ken met with a man who thanked him for letting his men use his library for illicit Obscurati research, and Oscan may or may not have been recruited by a halfling who seemed to be looking for assassins. As the mingled with the dozens of guests, the travelers marveled at the notion of an Obscurati Convention. By the time they were called to the second floor to meet with someone important, the name “ObCon” had been coined.

On the second floor, they were guided to the end of one of the long wings of the mansion. A huge room at the end of the hall contained a central fireplace with a lounge to one side of the room and conference table on the other. At the end of the conference table sat a large man who stood to greet them. The man looked for all the world like Mister Mapple’s evil twin. He was clean-shaven and had his white hair styled in a conservative fashion. He wore a tailored suit, complete with gloves.

“Welcome,” he said. “Call me Nicodemus. I want to thank you all for everything you have done for the organization. It is time to move to the next phase of the operation, and we feel it’s important that our most important members be given more information on what it is we’re trying to do. Quite simply, we’re going to change the world, and I’m so glad to have you all here to help. Please, sit, have a drink, and have a look at the informational packets provided. We have a chance to change the world to make it more to our liking. There are various ideas of how we could go about this, and this weekend is about sharing those ideas and then voting as a group.”

The travelers tore into their small pamphlets, which seemed to describe the plans of the Obscurati in great detail. As they started reading, however, they could feel the memory fading. They tore through the packets as quickly as they could in an effort to retain as much information as possible before them memory faded. It is, unfortunately, not a matter of record how much they retained and how much they forgot, so this report will not attempt to guess at such matters.

The constables re-joined their own bodies in the Navras Opera House. They hurriedly discussed all they had seen. They agreed that the Watchmaker’s plan (which seemed to take away free will) was evil. Summer opined that the Miller’s Pyre plan seemed not all that bad: just giving people more empathy couldn’t be that bad. But, of course, they all agreed that no matter what plan the Obscurati decided to go with, they were messing with the structure of the world, and that was too dangerous to allow.

This was also the first time the constables had to chat about all the other memories they had just experienced. When Cazara heard about Summer’s experience as Harkover Lee a hundred years prior, they both decided that he must be another dragon in human form. Cazara sent a message to Lee: “So, which dragon were you?” His response: “That’s on a need-to-know basis.”

 

[skotothalamos]

Mother's Day, part 1

The constables rushed to Slate to have a meeting with King Aodhan about their vision of ObCon. They shared ad much as they could remember, together with the information that Livia Hatsfield and Catherine Romana were Obscurati members. When Cazara asked if Aodhan knew that Hatsfield was a spy, he said that, yes, she was his spy in the Obscurati.

The constables followed Summer to Cauldron Hill, where her last recovered memory in Risur waited. Talking to Captain Dale, they secured access to the destroyed Obscurati facility, which was no longer in the Bleak Gate (usually). Summer and the constables descended into the wreckage, where they relived many memories of Kasvarina, Leone Quital, and Alexander Grappa running the facility. Kasvarina mostly worked on teaching the witchoil golems. She taught them and learned their different personalities, and they called her “Mother.” Their father was the man who had designed their consciousnesses: the “Mindmaker,” Grappa. After a series of such memories, Summer had a memory of Kasvarina sharing a bottle of wine with Leone Quital while they discussed the betrayal of Grappa. During their discussion, Quital noticed that Grappa was eavesdropping inside a nearby air vent. He used his magnetic powers to pull the vent from the wall with Grappa still inside. Grappa was taken away to a prison cell.

The final memory at Cauldron Hill involved Grappa’s bronze-golem servant coming to Kasvarina and telling her that Grappa wanted to talk. When she went to him, he used his mind powers to wipe away centuries of her memory. He told her that people are just the product of their accumulated experiences, and that he believed that Kasvarina was at heart a good person, but had suffered some horrible experiences. By wiping away those experiences and regressing her to her younger self, Grappa hoped that Kasvarina would return to the idealism of her youth, and then the memory ended. But the constables knew the rest of the story: Grappa and Kasvarina escaped in the early days of Summer. He and his golem were tracked down and destroyed by Quital, though Grappa was able to transfer his consciousness to the decapitated head of his golem, where it stayed until the RHC found it. Kasvarina wandered the Cloudwood until Gale found her and brought her to live with Nevard’s Skyseers. Kasvarina had no memory of even her name, and was called “Summer.”

The constables returned to a more regular schedule for a month or so before being called to a meeting with Clint City Governor Roland Stanfield. During that month, Alienor brought her daughter over to Risur from Danor to keep her safe. Alienor wanted her daughter to live with the Skyseers as Summer had, and to be watched over by Gale. Gale, of course, indicated that she could not take responsibility for a teenager, but she would do her best to make sure she was well taken care of. Alienor’s daughter wanted nothing to do with it, having been plucked from the cosmopolitan lifestyle of Cherage and dumped in the middle of a damp forest with a bunch of old hippies. Alienor put her foot down and insisted that she stay and learn about those different from herself, especially the eladrin.

At the meeting with Stanfield on the 1st of Autumn, the constables (and their boss, Delft) were informed that the Flint city government was not satisfied with the performance of the RHC in the city. The RHC’s best constables spent more time on international missions than they did dealing with the problems in Flint. Stanfield had Captain Dale read off a list of problems, from riots to maritime troubles, but Delft cut him off. He informed Stanfield that he had a classified mission to send the constables on, but he would do his best to reinforce the local RHC office with more fresh graduates from the academy in Slate. Delft then said the meeting was over and instructed his constables to leave.

On the carriage ride back, Delft told the constables about their new mission: to track down Leone Quital, the “Steelshaper.” Delft produced a letter from Alexander Grappa, who said he had been destroyed by Quital again during the collapse of the Cauldron Hill facility, but he had managed to transfer is own consciousness into the back of Quital’s mind. Grappa stayed hidden away while Quital was awake, but once Quital fell asleep, Grappa could take control of the body. Grappa said he needed the constables’ help to get free of Quital and get a body for himself. He offered a carrot in exchange for their help: information about an upcoming Obscurati meeting for which Quital was coordinating the travel plans of a half-dozen or so travelers. The meeting would take place on the 79th of Autumn, and Grappa knew where and how to get in, but he would only offer that information in person after the constables had rescued him.

The constables and Delft realized that ObCon had not yet happened. Somehow they had experienced a vision of the future!

 

[skotothalamos]

Mother's Day, part 2

With Grappa’s letter in hand, Delft and the constables agreed that their next step should be to track down Leone Quital and free Grappa from his mind. Then, with Grappa’s information, they could infiltrate ObCon and get closer to undermining the conspiracy’s plans. To start, they would need to follow Quital’s trail to the Crisillyiri city of Alais Primos, seat of the clergy. Delft told the constables to head to the docks, where the Impossible was waiting to take them to Crisillyir. He also told them that former Junior Constable Oksana Kozlov had been on sabbatical in Drakr these past six months. She had just returned to active duty and would meet up with them in Alais Primos. Before they left, he provided them with a full set of Communication Rings, which allowed for communication rituals (like Sending) to cross the barrier between the real world and the Bleak Gate. Harkover Lee had made them specifically for the constables, on the assumption that their travels would undoubtedly take them back to the Bleak Gate.

Upon arriving at the docks, Captain Smith rushed up to them, indicating that there was an incident aboard the ship. A woman with skin the color of the open sea and tentacles for hair was trying to install a magical “portal pad,” saying it was a gift, and could the constables please talk to her? They obliged, and the woman introduced herself as Beshela, Archfey of the Sea. She said that she had previously been allied with the Duchess Ethelyn, and the Duchess had warned of a terrible threat to Risur. Since the constables had defeated Ethelyn, they must be more powerful than her and best equipped to face this nebulous threat, and so Beshela was offering them a gift: a portal pad for their ship that would not only allow for teleportation to and from the ship, but also allow the entire ship to sail into the Dreaming or the Bleak Gate if need be.

The constables, especially Cazara, were wary of accepting a gift from the fey. As they were beginning to question Beshela on the specifics of the gift, they heard a crowd approaching, singing one of Rock Rackus’s bawdier songs. They all turned to watch as the crowd approached, led by Rock himself, who was accompanied by James. They marched to the dock, and when the song finished, Rock shouted up to the party. “I heard you need my help on your next mission!”

As everyone took a moment to let that sink in, the crowd grew restless. They had spotted Beshela and started to shout angrily about her supposed misdeeds. According to the crowd, she was responsible for every bit of misfortune that had befallen any of them on or near the sea. Accusations ranging from spoiled cargo to sunken ships filled the air. Just when it seemed a riot would begin, a dapper gentleman in a fine suit popped into being with his arm around Beshela. The man’s hat had a fancy ring made from polished copper, but where his face and hands should have been, there was nothing. Cazara recognized him immediately as fey emissary Copperhat the Headless.

“Good day, Agents of King Kelland,” said Copperhat, before turning his “face” toward Beshela and making an exaggerated smooching sound. She detached herself from him and glared at him as he walked and teleported around the ship with no respect for the law of gravity. Cazara addressed him by name and asked him what he wanted. He walked up masts and stood on the undersides of sails as he asked the party whether they were trusting Beshela and accepting her gift. He hinted that the Unseen Court had been having some disagreements with some archfey. “It’s times like this when exciting and stupid things happen,” he said.

Copperhat then grabbed the portal pad and teleported with it to the dock. He dropped it from a high height and when it struck the wood of the dock, the dock began to dissolve into seaweed and run into the bay. “That would have been your ship!” It was around this time that Rock and the constables noticed that James had disappeared; he had been Copperhat in disguise all along. This enraged Beshela. She summoned a kraken and a stormcloud of acid rain and dove into the ocean. With Rock’s help, the constables were able to defeat the kraken, at which point it dissolved into so much seaweed.

After the fight, Copperhat congratulated everyone on their victory (in which, it should be noted, he had not actually participated in any meaningful way). “My work is done here. Rock, King Thisraldion is hosting a party this very night. Shall we away?” Rock eagerly agreed, and the two vanished an explosion of leaves and flower petals. As the constables took stock of what had just happened, Copperhat and Rock re-appeared. “I almost forgot,” said Copperhat, “I need a favor. I have an item I need kept safe, but I can’t be bothered to carry it. Would you do me the honor of carrying it for me?” At this, he produced a foot-wide glob of tangled spider web from his pocket. “Feel free to use it while you’re holding onto it. You’ll have some dead bodies on your hands in the near future and this will come in handy. Not sure quite what you’re up to, but I’ve got a knack. I can always smell a corpse in the offing.” The constables agreed to hold Copperhat’s Absurdist Web for him. A quick once-over by Summer revealed that it was an extradimensional holding space. Copperhat thanked them again and poofed back to the Dreaming.

The journey to Crisillyir was far less eventful. Upon arriving in Alais Pimos, Summer disguised everyone as humans, and Alienor hid her guns in the jacket she had taken off Lorcan Kell, as both non-humans and firearms could be trouble in the clergy’s most conservative city. They proceeded to the address Delft had provided them with for contacting Oksana. She answered the door, looking confused at the gaggle of humans on her threshold. Cazara flashed her badge and pushed her way past the dwarf into the apartment. “Undercover,” she explained.

Oksana had last seen active duty the night Lorcan Kell and his lieutenants slaughtered Pablo Duende, Garson “Bugtree” Wildflower, and Quentin Augst, the lawyer they were supposed to protect. Oksana had been carrying Augst to safety when Kell hacked them both down with his vicious machetes. Left for dead under the corpse of her charge, Oksana was revived by Magnus and the two escaped the carnage. Since that traumatic event, Oksana had been on sabbatical in her homeland of Drakr. While there, she had been exploring the various belief systems of her people, most significantly Eschatology. During her explorations of Drakr’s many libraries, she happened upon a heretical original text by William Miller. While studying the text, the ghost of Miller appeared to her in a vision and tasked her with bringing his original, unedited message to the people. This encounter infused Oksana with mental powers. She found she was able to control minds and even bend reality to her will. She set aside her old martial training and spent many months exploring her new powers and trying to find more of Miller’s original texts (which were supposedly all burned with him when the Clergy executed him as a heretic in the year 17).

The constables got her up to speed on the current situation, explaining about the Obscurati, Grappa, Quital, and ObCon. Oksana revealed that she had recently had a dream where she was Ken Don, the head of the Jeneva Grand Librarium in Alais Primos, and as him she had attended a convention just like the one they described. She filled them in on her situation in Alais Primos; she had arrived two weeks prior and been put up in this apartment by former RHC agent Joe Hobner. However, she had not heard from Joe in two weeks and was vaguely concerned. Before starting their pursuit of Quital, the constables decided to check up on Joe.

At Joe’s import/export business, they were greeted by someone who looked just like Joe Hobner, but who did not seem to recognize Oksana, referring to her as a customer. When she asked him to retrieve her fictional special order, he went into his back storeroom and tried to escape out the back door. Cazara was fastest in pursuit, but by the time she got into the alley, the imposter was already dead. Two kobolds squatted on his back, wielding bloody daggers. Cazara pounced on them in return and held them down as their boss arrived.

With a dramatic pillar of smoke, a kobold wizard teleported into the alley seated atop a pile of books. He wore dark robes and stroked his fleshy “whiskers” while smoking a pipe and flipping through a tiny book in his lap. The fact that he was doing three things with his two hands was somehow not remarkable. Cazara and IronPeak recognized him as matching the description of El Extraño, the spymaster of Ber. He opened with a monologue.

“I know all of your names. Do not be impressed yet. It is not impressive because I did not need my many loyal eyes for that. I work for Bruse Cavallo, and he told me your names while we ate dinosaur eggs in his castle. Still, it is not time to be impressed.

“I became interested in this conspiracy that has caused so much trouble, and I knew if I were them, I would kill your spies. Also, I knew where your spies were. Do not be impressed. It is not hard to guess that a former constable would still spy for his country. My eyes watched his home, and sadly they could not save him from this assassin. But then they watched the assassin, and now we have helped you.

“Leone Quital was spotted on the 28th of Spring in the Cathedral of Triegenes at Enzyo Mons. Do not be impressed that I know you are looking for him. His former associate, the gnome named Oddcog, cursed the man’s name repeatedly while he fitted me for my own mechanical battle suit. It was natural you would seek the Steelshaper at some point.
“We will work together. My eyes will follow you, look for threats and targets around you, and share what they see. If you disagree, my eyes will send couriers to share what they see, so that you don’t get upset and kill any of them. You should read this book, so you respect the value of little people.”
El Extraño tossed his tiny book to Alienor. She read the title: Codex of the Little People. The constables agreed to his help, but on the promise that he wouldn’t kill the people they were trying to question in the future. He said there were ways to question the dead, but agreed to try to have his people be more careful in the future. He asked Cazara to free the two she was currently pinning to the ground and they scampered up onto nearby rooftops. With another dramatic pillar of smoke, El Extraño was gone. Oksana tried to speak with the dead man, but discovered that he had no soul to speak to. El Extraño had at least provided them with the information that Quital had been seen going to the volcano just a few miles outside of town, where the devout made sacrifices that kept the caldera quiet these past 700 years.

Not looking forward to a day of canvassing dockworkers for any information about a ship that came into harbor five months ago, the constables decided to pursue some of Summer’s memories first. They followed the pull of the Arc of Reida to a hillside half a mile outside the city. When they arrived, the Arc altered reality out to the largest diameter yet.

The crackling edge of the reality shift stretched all the way back to the walls of the city, where the golden bells of the cathedrals were ringing, summoning a great enchanted shield for the entire city. The farmland between the hilltop and the city walls had turned from farmland to a battlefield. Around the constables was an entire Eladrin army from the time of the Great Malice. Half of them lay dead and the others stood in stunned disbelief. Between the army and the hilltop where the constables stood was a circle of six bonfires. At the center of the circle knelt Kasvarina, holding the charred remains of an Eladrin woman. In the air above Kasvarina, a shadow made of soot and ash hung in the air. Before the wind disperses it, the shadow looked like it was in the shape of a six-armed woman, one hundred feet tall. Kasvarina was out of her mind with grief and while she knew who the woman was that she held at the time, she could not remember who it was after the memory even ended. Alienor went to investigate one of the bonfires, and inside she found a fifteen-foot-tall flaming sword. She grabbed it.

As the memory faded, Alienor was somehow able to enforce her will on the sword and bring it back with her. She knew instinctively that it was the Third Sword of Srasama, embodying her aspect as the mother-protector. Summer collapsed to the ground, catatonic. Some local farmers who had been subjected to the memory panicked and ran. The constables made their way back into the city as quickly as they could.

 

[skotothalamos]

Manhunt

James, ever playing catch-up after side missions to create artificial limbs and party, disembarked in Alais Primos just in time to see the shadow of a massive six-armed woman dissipate just outside the walls. It did not take him long to find the constables, as they scrambled to don disguises and whisk a catatonic Summer into hiding before anyone started asking questions.

Though Summer had indicated pulls to three different locations, the constables decided that given her extreme emotional distress and the very public nature of the last memory, perhaps it was wise to wait for a new day before continuing to follow that thread. Instead, they set about their more immediate business of tracking Leone Quital.

Though El Extraño had given them a good lead, the constables decided to be thorough. They started at the docks, where they learned that the ship Quital hired out of Flint, the Cold Vessel, had arrived on Spring 20, but no passengers had been recorded. The workers on the pier remembered seeing Quital who wanted new clothes and was referred to a particular shop. By that time it was getting late so the constables decided to continue in the morning and crashed at Oksana’s flat.

After resting, Summer felt a bit better and was motivated to continue gathering the memories set in Alais Primos, as traumatic as they may prove. The constables agree to accompany her before continuing after Quital, and they all followed her to a chapel in the Grand Librarium.

The arc transformed a chapel into a room set up for triage, in the year before the Malice. Cots lined the walls instead of pews, set in private and magically soundproofed booths. Two dozen injured Eladrin lay in the cots, medically sedated and chained by the wrists to the walls. A single human man tended them.

The memory unfolded into a month’s worth of recollections. The man spoke to a few of his charges every day, asking what they believed, their opinions on the war, whether Elfaivar had any who would acquiesce to a truce, whether they had family back home. Every day, a few of his charges died.

He spoke to Kasvarina, too. She told him first that she hated priests, that her husband died in the first Holy War. When he speaks to her again he did not wear his Clergy robes, and told her that he was raised in the faith, but no longer believed. He introduced himself as William Miller.

After a week, only four Eladrin remained, including Kasvarina. She had regained much of her strength, and the man sat beside her bed. He removed her chains and she remained and spoke with him for a long time. He proposed that the two of them escape the city and try to negotiate a truce in Elfaivar. Kasvarina discussed the plan in its minutia with him, and then agreed. She wondered if some other of the patients could join them, and he informed her that she had been the only one left for several days.

He gave her medicine to sleep, and then quietly chemically executed the other three remaining prisoners.

The memory faded, and the group informs Summer what they saw of Miller’s scheming. Oksana, who felt a deep personal connection to Miller and his works, speculated that this event must have been the point at which Miller’s schism from the Clergy began - that his time working with Kasvarina must have changed him in some way. Cazara and Ironpeak were far less impressed, feeling his actions spoke far more of his character than his words. Summer felt a new memory pulling her to the third floor of the Jenevah Grand Librarium.

This memory took place not long after the last. Miller and Kasvarina met with a couple of bishops and a priestess. Miller explained that Kasvarina would represent the Eladrin in initial peace talks. He explained his reasoning for acting without the Church’s approval, and gently suggested that the Clergy’s leadership was corrupt and wanted replacing. The priestess signaled an alarm, and guards surrounded and bound the pair. The bishops told an inquisitor that Miller had disclosed heretical plans.

Miller tried to reason with them and Kasvarina advised dying with dignity. An inquisitor told her that they were not sentenced to death but to imprisonment on the Isle of Odiem. The pair were dragged away, Miller cursing and Kasvarina silent.

As the memory faded the group exchanged uncomfortable looks. Summer reported that the other memory pull in Alais Primos - one near the outer walls - had flickered out. She intuited that they could have learned nothing there that they had not learned already.

The constables spent the rest of the afternoon following Quital’s trail. They checked in the clothing shop, where Quital had ordered clothes to be picked up on the 28th, and asked about a wine and cheese shop. The constables deduced that he had probably stayed at a nearby inn, which (they learned after Alienor flipped the concierge a Lucky Coin,) he had checked out of on the 28th. He had mentioned then that he was heading to Enzyo Mons.

The next day Cazara, Summer, and Ironpeak visited the mountain, leaving James, Alienor, and Oksana to investigate the wine merchant. The road up Enzyo Mons was lined with shrines to various Clergy Gods; the constables admired a shrine to Wilik, god of civilization, and Cazara paused to ask the Shrine of Dana the Far-Seeing what she had seen of Quital. The shrine remembered someone matching that description pass last Spring, carrying a curious metallic likeness of a human head. They reached the Cathedral at the top, and Summer asked the priests what they had seen. They indicated that they would not speak with her until she made an offering to the volcano, and she threw a number of coins into the net they’d set within the caldera. They confirmed that they had seen Quital, and that he had left via carriage with a younger man whose features were similar to Leone’s. When prompted by Cazara, the cathedral itself remembered him lobbing the golem head beyond the tithing net and into the volcano proper before he’d left.

When the Constables reconvened, those who had visited the cheese shop reported that the shop had not seen Leone, but that they had a shipment from the Quital Winery on the 28th. Alienor presented the bottle of Quital Wine she had purchased, with information about the Vineyard on the label.

Satisfied that they’d tied up all loose ends, the constables decided to head for Vendricce. Summer had a strong pull from the Arc of Reida toward Odiem, and the constables agreed to detour there just long enough to ascertain how much time those memories would take. It would not do to get trapped in the Crypta again, with Leone’s trail cooling so rapidly.

 

[skotothalamos]

of potential additional interest, Alienor's player commissioned Summer's player for a "romance novel cover" image capturing Alienor and Gale's torrid history:

 

[RangerWickett]

Aw man. That's wonderful. Do you have permission to use it for other things? I.e., would the artist be okay if we slipped it into a ZEITGEIST product?

 

[RangerWickett]

By the way, I just listened to your Z playlist, and it delights me to no end that you included Kanye's "Power."

(And I had to get mp3s of a couple of the other songs. Nice mix.)

 

[skotothalamos]

Aw man. That's wonderful. Do you have permission to use it for other things? I.e., would the artist be okay if we slipped it into a ZEITGEIST product?

I will ask.

 

[skotothalamos]

I have handed session-reporting duties off to one of the players (Cazara). Future sessions will be written from the perspective of Dr. Xambria Meredith, who still resides in Cazara's brain.

 

[skotothalamos]

Want You Gone

The constables took a ship to near the Island of Odiem. They lowered a rowboat to get near the island, hoping to get a sense for where the memories would begin and how many there would be. As soon as they drew close, however, the memory swept them in and they had no choice but to follow.

Cazara, Oksana, and Alienor, who managed to stay apart from the memory, noticed immediately that something strange was happening. It seemed as though another magical effect pushed in on the area of the arc’s influence, surrounding a dwarf woman - not part of Kasvarina’s memory - who approached them. She wore Clergy robes, and introduced herself as Serafima. She said that the divinations were correct, that she was here to meet with us, and follow us through Kasvarina’s memory, that she might silence the area when the Sacrament of Apotheosis is described.

The lucid constables were not convinced, but the memory was moving on without them. They watched the intruder carefully as they descended once again into the Crypt.

When the Constables reached the room in which they defeated the mad Godhand, they noticed three statues that were not there when they last visited the crypt. They noticed too that these were not part of Kasvarina’s memory. Cazara pointed them out to Oksana, who performed an object reading ritual to determine their origin. She saw three Pemberton duplicants instructed to enter the vault and turning stony and still as they waited. The statues were then summarily marched to another room at Oksana’s urging, and the lucid constables turned back to the memory.

There they found Kasvarina and Miller standing before the Ashima-Shimtu and her pool. They were discussing whether they could just swim out through the well when the suspended demon stirred, shaking her chains, tensing with pain.

Miller started reading the inscriptions on the walls, relaying the story of the demonocracy: how Ashima-Shimtu betrayed them to save herself, how she was imprisoned here when she would not relinquish her greatest secret. Kasvarina wondered if she might have knowledge that could assist in the war. When Miller didn’t stop her, she drew the hook from Ashima-Shimtu’s lips.

The Demon spoke: “For the first time in centuries, Ashima-Shimtu can speak. She is pleased by this change, and welcomes those who come to seek knowledge. Her wish may be the same as her fellow prisoners – to bring down the vile Clergy – but the Lady of the Forked Tongue does not so casually risk the deception of strangers. Already her voice grows tired from disuse, and so she would ask her visitors to share their tale.”

Miller and Kasvarina spoke with the demon for a time, sharing their story as she shared hers. She told them how the Demonocracy used the Sacrament of Apotheosis in war, and how she gave it to Triegenes with hopes that he would make a better world. The holy man used it only once, when he had no other option, and never shared it with his followers. When Triegenes died his followers demanded to know the secret. Since then Ashima-Shimtu had hung there, meditating on the nature of evil.

With new knowledge of the Holy War between the Clergy and the Eladrin, she was willing to share the ritual again. She recommended that the pair return to the entrance of the Crypt and give details of the ritual in return for their freedom. Once the Clergy knew the rite they would bring out their God of War, she reasoned, and the Eladrin would know the secret to its defeat; the God brought forth would be invulnerable only if its attacker does not know its true name. To kill the Clergy god of war, she said, would kill the motivation to make war.

As Ashima-Shimtu was poised to begin her instruction, Serafima bustled to cast a silence over the room. She spoke a series of pseudo-thaumaturgical gibberish phrases that fooled no one, and earned her a bullet from Alienor’s gun before she blipped out of seeing.

Ashima-Shimtu delivered her great secret to a rapt audience in memory while bullets and ice ricocheted around the cave. Alienor did her best to find the invisible dwarf with the Third Sword of Srasama, but the sword registered no women but the constables and Ashima-Shimtu. Most of the constables got hit with a stunning effect which effects prevented the bulk of the party from remembering what they had witnessed of these events, but it did not take everyone. When Ashima Shimtu finished her recitation, an icy simulacrum appeared and said: “I am Grandis Komanov, bringer of this world’s icy end, and you have given me the greatest weapon I could ever have.”

When the memory faded, the present-day Ashima-Shimtu turned to the party and said: “The prisoner of the Clergy remembers what horrors were wrought by her attempt to escape. She has accepted her punishment, and asks no others repeat her folly. She says this with no malice, only contrition.” She allowed the constables to teleport from her pool to their ship bound for Vendricce.


The details of the Sacrament as heard by Xambria Meredith are here transcribed and magically ciphered to be read on a top-secret need-to-know basis:

The ritual must be centered on an individual who represents the god or idea that is being invoked, and the power that person gains depends on how many followers that god or idea has, and how fervent. In addition to some archaic chants that take an hour, the ritual performers must sacrifice a lion, an eagle, a whale, and a dragon, then use their blood to adorn the subject with the name of the god or idea. Finally, the target must drink a cup of blood from a believer and recite the mantra, “Before I was nothing but words. Now I am all that is believed. I am faith made flesh. I am flesh made a god.”

The subject will rapidly transform into a physical incarnation, maintaining that form for a day. He’ll gain unrivaled strength and resistance to injury, but anyone who knows the name of the actual person within the incarnation will be able to harm it as easily as they would a normal person. Also, once the effect ends, the subject is severely weakened for days or weeks. Finally, if the incarnation dies, a backlash will strike the believers. How severe a backlash is relative to the intensity of their belief.