Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Echolocation" data-source="post: 8323398" data-attributes="member: 7011911">Session 62Courtesy of Ella's playerLast week’s session began huddled within a Cloak of Secrets on the upper floor of our cosy Beran villa. Having barely survived our first -and very long - day in Ber, we were all looking forward to a good night’s rest, but Ella had one more problem to add to the pile before bed.Lya had tried to recruit her. To the Obscurati. As a double agent. Which Ella clearly wasn’t suited to since she’d wasted less than ten minutes in telling everyone. The gnome was quick to explain though that she didn’t want to work for the Obscurati, rather she wanted to spy on them while pretending to work for them. To ferret out all their juicy secrets. To become a triple agent of sorts.Everyone else was… understandably concerned by this scheme, but not particularly surprised to hear of Lya’s recruitment efforts. Which is frankly just insulting. Did everyone assume Ella was going to turn Obscurati eventually? Was there some kind of betting pool I wasn’t aware of? What about Sydney? Sydney could be an Obscurati agent! You don’t know!...Potential secret agent shenanigans aside though, Lya’s requirement for Ella’s recruitment - that she throw the Bruse’s games - wasn’t entirely out of the question. It even made a kind of sense. Why pander to the Bruse’s whims and risk hostility between Ber and Risur simply for the chance to talk to Tinker first? Speaking to him second wasn’t the end of everything; it might even be beneficial - assuming Lya didn’t break the Bruse’s rules by teleporting Tinker away.After considerable debate, we made a tentative decision and sent two Sendings to Delft. Our surrogate dad figure was quick to assure us that any potential attack by the Cavallo would be dealt with, and to suggest that while what we did with the games was up to us, having a channel into the Obscurati would be incredibly useful. Thus confirmed in our thoughts, we decided: come morning we’d inform the Bruse of our withdrawal from the games.That settled, we could finally - finally - go to bed. After what may have been the longest day of our careers.Sleep passed restfully, until Lisandra began to dream. A confusing vision of Glaucia standing with a glowing staff near a sleeping black serpent, only for the serpent to wake and shed its skin: becoming several smaller, paler snakes which swarmed the gnoll and began to devour her feet. In the background an invisible presence approached - marked only by its distorted footprints on the floor - and ripped Glaucia’s throat open. The gnoll’s flesh began to decay, devoured by necrotic energy as the snakes also devoured her.Lisandra woke with her last glimpse of the gnoll’s shame-filled face imprinted in her mind.[SPOILER="A Prophecy"]Lisandra's dream is a vision of Glaucia's demise. Given the party enjoy her company, she will travel with them to Pemberton's lair. However, according to the vision, Glaucia will light her staff to dismiss the darkness of the gnoll ambush in the pump room. Then, following the detonation of the water tanks, a wire (black snake) will become exposed (shed its skin), and send electricity coursing along the ground (small, pale snakes) that will devour Glaucia from the ground up. An invisible Pardo will then enter the room (marked only by distorted footprint; i.e., the ripples of his movement), approach Glaucia, and kill her with slay living. I rejigged the encounter a bit to keep Pardo at full casting capacity.The reason why Lisandra is having such a prophetic dream is because the source of her divine power is near...[/SPOILER]Something else from the dream remained too: warped footsteps, etched onto her bedroom floor by phantom outlines. Spectral wisps of past torment, showing dozens - hundreds - of people writhing in agony rose from each footprint. The trail of torment led Lisandra out of her room: through a bedroom door standing ajar where previously she had left it locked, to the courtyard door likewise hanging open. In the pre-dawn light, Lisandra saw the courtyard splattered with blood.She roused the others, now hearing Ralfa’s cries of pain from below: begging someone to stop, please. Wasting no time, Lisandra dashed outside with the Blade of Srasama in her hand. Through the blade’s divine connection she could feel Ralfa’s lifeforce ebbing. When she flung open the door of the dining room though it was to an unexpected scene: Dejaro hacking at Ralfa with a cleaver and helpless grief in his eyes, while a familiar figure sat nearby, watching. Father Balthazar.The psychic lich looked at Lisandra and smiled as he casually commented, “That’s enough,” to Dejaro. The orc stopped his unwilling torture as Balthazar examined his daughter. “Tea, darling? Are your friends with you? They can join us, of course.”The oracle responded by casting a searing blast of light, but the lich simply absorbed it with a shadowy, ghostly shield and scoffed at her rudeness. As Lisandra’s arm glowed with growing pain, John knocked Dejaro out cold and Balthazar explained that while he could murder the lot of us and rip Lisandra’s arm off her screaming body, he would show rare restraint for now. But only if Lisandra wore a ring. One that would allow him to monitor her location and condition. And if she ever died, he’d be coming to take her arm back.In the meantime, he hoped she would come to accept her inherited power and eventually approach him herself to unlock the full measure of her potential.Or… some egomaniacal, self-serving naughty word like that.Wracked with increasing pain, Lisandra agreed, and after placing the Prisoner’s Dungeon Ring on her finger, Balthazar sweetly informed her that Ralfa had betrayed us all, then Teleported away.[SPOILER="A ring"]It's a prisoner ring. The lich was surprisingly honest, intending to use the ring to track his daughter until her death. He truly hopes the world will corrupt Lisandra. The strange sensation of hope has instilled Balthazar with a foreign sense of patience. During the contact with Balthazar, his sickle (corrupted blade of Srasama) briefly called out in a desperate plea for aid. Lisandra's mother is trapped within, and knows a soul gem of intense fury is the only way to dismiss the lich's defenses. Fortunately, Grappa will help the party collect such a gem in Adventure 7.[/SPOILER]Lisandra questioned Ralfa, and discovered that Lya had paid the goblin maid to place loops of golden thread in two party members’ pockets - presumably as an anti-teleportation measure. Given that the goblin maid was now missing her feet due to Dejaro’s enchanted violence… Lisandra decided she’d suffered enough and left her with her coins.Three minutes after Balthazar disappeared Minister of Dragon Affairs Kenna Vigilante arrived on her morning jog. Angharad provided to her a…. brief description of the morning’s events and guards were quickly summoned. Many questions later, the Minister, Angharad and Lisandra departed for their jog, while Ella and John cleared their belongings out of the villa.During the jog Kenna discussed her interest in martial theses with Angharad and Lisandra, expressing her desire to establish a joint martial school where Berans and Risuri could collaborate on research - thus improving efficiency and reducing research costs. Meanwhile Ella, John and Polo chatted as the lizardfolk led them to the Court, expressing condolences for the dead guards and acquiring an invitation to their funeral.When we finally regrouped at the Court for an audience with the Bruse, our declaration of withdrawal was… met with a mixed response. Lisandra presented our excuses eloquently but her carefully crafted words did little to allay Shantus’ tears, as the Bruse tearfully sent us out of the room to wait while Lya was recalled and Tinker was sent for.Lya smiled at us as she arrived, and Tinker pouted as he was escorted past by guards, saying: “I don’t want to talk to them!” While Ella had a minor crisis over that comment, Lisandra noticed that - much like the Minister of Rebellion, Pardo - Tinker's soul was oddly stretched toward the south.The gnome’s temperament seemed similarly strained: as partway through Lya’s meeting the gnome yelled at everyone to leave. He gave them till the count of 16, and as he began counting, Lisandra saw that the guards’ souls in the antechamber were also stretched. Chaos erupted as a guard ran in from outside, only to be cut down by another guard partway through yelling “We’re under a-!”Eerie, unnatural red glowed in the eyes of the guards as they began murdering each other - some of them turning towards us with the same violence. And in the midst of everything, Ella and John heard an ominous, descending whistle... as if something were falling toward us from above…Will we make it out of here alive? Is Tinker some kind of evil, soul-warping mastermind? And will Angharad ever get to play a game of cards with the Bruse? Find out the answers to hopefully one of these questions, this week: on Zeitgeist!</blockquote>

Verification