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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Echolocation" data-source="post: 8177845" data-attributes="member: 7011911">Session 39 Courtesy of Ella's playerAnother day, another criminal organisation to threaten or bribe… Emphasis on the threaten this time. We arrived at the Stoneforge ready for a fight: armed with magical totems from Damata and some stylish warpaint! Or… well Angharad and Damata had warpaint. The rest of us were boring and plain-faced as we marched into the Stoneforge to speak on Damata’s behalf.The actual speaking only lasted about... thirty seconds before we unanimously agreed that the naughty word in charge of this gang needed to die. ...Or at the very least receive a very physical lesson in not threatening our friends. Sylvester and his thugs were thoroughly educated in short order: by means of a Fireball, a dozen bullets and some sharp lioness claws. Lisandra did take a rather nasty hit from a human-bane dagger in the process, but got her own back by ordering the last two thugs standing to surrender and pin the blame for the missing money on Sylvester. Making sure that Damata and his family’s names were not mentioned in the process.Satisfied that the Grientos were safe, we parted ways with Damata - although not without some tears, handshakes and hugs - and received an invitation to visit him and his family in Ber sometime. With the pleasant part of the evening thus concluded, we made our way to the Nalaam arena: to see what Elanor had planned. The arena turned out to be an absolutely massive building - guarded by security guards using magical telepathic earpieces. We managed to get to our first class viewing box without Ella dying of jealousy on the way - and ran into Professor Kipana on the way. He said his farewells and explained that he wouldn’t be getting on the train the next day, as he teaches here in Nalaam.That left us with plenty of shady individuals still to investigate though - with Elanor first on the list. And no, I don’t care that we knew at that point that she wasn’t Obscurati. She was still on the list. Fortunately she was seated in the room right next to ours, so we had a clear view of her shmoozing three of the most notoriously corrupt and wealthy mages in Nalaam. This included the necromancer Nikola, the ex-druid Jamie the Weevil, and the Clergyman Father Balthazar. Elanor was attempting to sell them Isobel, who - as it turned out - was an eladrin woman raised as a sex slave.While we were processing that information, the fighting in the arena had begun, and it wasn’t long before we saw a familiar face being dragged into the arena: Mr Mapple. He managed to survive the initial bear fight, at which point Elanor offered up a thousand gold pieces to have him fight something a little more dangerous instead. But before she did, she wanted to know one thing: his name. This demand sparked quite the speech from Mr Mapple - or, as he soon told us: Andrei (“Audrey”) Von Recklinhausen. After threatening to murder every single thing in the arena and build a corpse ramp out of it to tear out Elanor’s heart, he was sentenced to fight the pyrecat: a one-eyed beast as tall as an elephant that could breathe fire like a dragon.In a show of badassery, Audrey almost managed to kill it before it set itself on fire and burned him horribly. Fleeing from the flames, he leapt off the cat’s back and stuck his axe into the wall just below our viewing balcony, staring up at us desperately. It didn’t take long for us to decide to help him - although Lisandra, oddly enough, was the most hesitant about it. John healed Audrey, Ella cast Glitterdust on the pyrecat, and Lisandra gave everyone communal fire resistance - although when she touched Audrey to transfer the spell she found herself drained of 5 points of Constitution. The man apologised to Lisandra profusely as he climbed into our room, then looked at us expectantly and asked if we were going to save Isobel.We, of course, agreed. Because firstly: naughty word Elanor. And secondly: naughty word Elanor.With the aid of Ella’s Haste we dashed around to Elanor’s room - the guards oddly moving out of our way as we approached, and the crowd in the rest of the stands going absolutely wild at the unexpected turn of events. On the way there, Lisandra cast a spell - a simple Divine Favour - and her left arm began to glow. This was only the first of many weirdnesses though, as we entered Elanor’s room to find one of the couches occupied by a very familiar figure: the red-haired half-eladrin woman from Lisandra’s dreams… the one who’d called her Mori. The one who seemed to be her mother...[SPOILER="What is happening?"]Inscribed on the bone within Lisandra's (AKA Mori's) left arm is a momento, an autobiography of all of Father Balthazar's evil deeds. It sustains Balthazar's immortality, as well as Lisandra's ghost speaking powers and divine connection. Once Lisandra's fate destined her to meet with her Father, her arm began to ache and her dreams became more vivid, dredging up long forgotten memories. Now, her arm radiates with Nemian power.The half-eladrin here is not Lisandra's mother who has long since perished, though her soul remains trapped within Balthazar's sickle (actually a corrupted Blade of Srasama). Instead, it is a demon under Balthazar's command. A fan of nostalgia, Balthazar has commanded the demon to use alter self to take the form of his semi-departed wife.Contrary to popular belief, Balthazar cannot summon demons. He transforms humans under vile rituals to take their form then dominates them.[/SPOILER]Lisandra wasn’t the only one shocked. Father Balthazar - the highest ranking clergy member in Nalaam - stared at the oracle as she came into sight and said: “You should not be here!” He scowled at Lisandra and as he did her glowing arm started to burn with pain. He looked at the half-eladrin woman and ordered: “Riskasha! Bring me her arm: a… memento Mori, if you will.” Then the punny twat vanished with a cast of a Teleport spell.Lord Kulp - the arena’s master of ceremonies - ushered Isobel off to one side, leaving us plenty of room to murder Elanor and her allies. And murder we did.John killed Jaime the ex-druid in a single volley of bullets - only to have him raised as a zombie immediately after by Nikola the necromancer. Meanwhile Sydney was chewing on Elanor’s butt and the half-eladrin - Riskasha - was picking up a double-bladed sword. As she walked toward Lisandra, her form shifted: changing from the familiar features of Lisandra’s dream mum to a winged demon with lash marks across her face.Ella decided she wasn’t going anywhere near that and clawed Elanor instead. Audrey finished off the despicable woman by bull rushing her over the balcony into the arena below. She was likely dead when she hit the snow… but the blind pyrecat wandering around down there made sure of it. Meanwhile Lisandra was facing her personal nightmare by zapping the mum-turned-demon with an Admonishing Ray and John followed her example by filling the outsider with so many bullets that dropped dead.Good thing… she wasn’t important… or anything… right? Aha… uh… anyway…It didn’t take long for the combat finish after that, with Audrey punching the zombie’s head clean off and Sydney ripping off the necromancer’s butt. Lord Kulp quietly invited us all to talk somewhere more… private… as the stands around us erupted in wild applause.After some initial suspicion we followed him down some stairs to a secret chamber and had a nice chat. Apparently, Lord Kulp was quite pleased with our outright slaughter of three of his guests. We’d done him quite the political favour. And in thanks, he offered us the dead mages’ gear - which he agreed to turn into a Scroll of Sending for us. He also let slip some possible Vekeshi leanings… but we didn’t have time to investigate that, because Lisandra was having a quiet mental breakdown and Audrey Von flipping Recklinhausen was in the room.Also Isobel. Who seemed somewhat unmoved by the whole affair - aside from a very quiet sense of satisfaction at the deaths of her former owner and future potential owners. Lord Kulp offered Isobel a chance at freedom: the opportunity to go wherever she liked, and after some thought she replied that she’d rather like to go to Flint, to meet Gale. Audrey volunteered to go with her and so it was settled - without any intervention on our part. Two more colourful characters to liven up our home city and give Delft a headache! I’m sure he’ll thank us later…Having just saved Audrey’s life though, we rather thought that he owed us some answers, and - after much prodding - found out that Wolfgang Von Recklinhausen was, in fact, Audrey’s father. Also that Audrey was a living construct - a fact that Ella has thus far failed to share with the party. But it could explain his ability to drain the life from people he touches…At this point Lisandra was on the verge of having a quiet mental breakdown so we said our farewells and retired to the enclave hotel to rest. There Lisandra had a dream: a dream of a now-familiar scene, but with quite different circumstances…The red-haired half-eladrin woman - Riskasha - was performing a ritual: helped by Father Balthazar and a familiar winged demon. Riskasha called upon Srasama and then cut her own neck, using a 15 ft long black-stained blade that turned into a dagger in her hands. Riskahsa fell dead to the ground and her ghost rose from her corpse, turning to Lisandra to comfort her. "It's okay, Mori, it's going to be okay. We'll all live. Forever." But as her spirit spoke, Father Balthazar stepped forward and stabbed her with the black-stained blade. The ghost faded and her voice emanated from the blade: cursing him. Father Balthazar smiled and turned to Lisandra, speaking to the demon behind him as he gestured at one of the baby’s arms. "Pull back the flesh. I always preferred the medium of bone."With a razor sharp quill and a vial of blood, he wrote on the bone of Lisandra’s left arm, leaving the oracle wondering WHAT THE HELL WAS HAPPENING!!! as she woke up. Being a calm and mature young woman, she reacted in the way any reasonable person would: by bursting into tears and being hugged until the world made some kind of sense again. Well… maybe not that last part… but she managed to pull herself together enough to get ready to depart for the train at least.Ella and John gave her some personal space to prepare while they ferried luggage down to the lobby, where they were greeted by several excited rumours about their combat in the arena the previous evening. As well as talk about a grisly ritualistic murder that had taken place in the city - one very similar to the other murders that had occurred at each of our stops in previous cities.Is there some kind of murderer on the loose? Perhaps on our very train? Could it be us? Ah, who am I kidding… we already know we’re murderers. More importantly: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH LISANDRA’S MUM? And are we ever going to do our jobs and find the Obscurati agents?Find out the answers to almost certainly none of these GODSDAMNED QUESTIONS… (sigh)... this week, on Zeitgeist.</blockquote>

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