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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 8058950" data-attributes="member: 6816692">The Lich in the IcebergWe then rest one day and return to Knütpara to meet the nameless Lich once more. We show him the Ring of Triegenes and explain that it will suffice to get him free from the divine ward and his icy prison. But we also insist that the Lich teaches us the soul swapping magic and performs it on a few individuals before we do so. Especially Dr. Xambria Meredith seems to be interested as this procedure might just provide her with a body of her own, so she's giving the Lich all of her attention. First, we say, we'd need the information of Leone, thus we'd need Grappa to be able to use Leone's body freely. No problem, says the Lich, just bring the guy to him, press him to the ice and he'll use his magic to expel the creature known as Leone Quintal.We agree that this will mean the end of Leone, but he already died anyway and forfeited his second chance, so no need to grieve for him.“But wait a minute.” Auryn injects “Just expelling him won't be enough. We need him, no, his soul, imprisoned. They resurrected him once, who says that they won't do it a second time?”Carlyle bites his lip at this statement but doesn't say a word. We then pull Leone out of the Absurdist's web and wake him up to prepare him for what's about to happen. For a moment, Leone is his over-confident self, but then he realizes that he is not in the RHC cell anymore, but in some sort of icy surrounding. And that seems to disturb him.We then tell him the facts straight to his face: Carlyle and Testamenta both granted him a second chance for another life after he got stuck in the Witchoil, but he refused to take it. Instead, he followed the Obs once again, killed Grappa and mocked us for our kindness. Usually, this would be enough to imprison him for a prolonged time in the RHC, but seeing that Testamenta pulled every string to retrieve an ancient divine artifact from a forbidden vault full of demonic relics, we have to assume that she'll just try again and again to return him to her side. Also, as the arguments he presented when he was locked up in the RHC cell were quite convincing, we don't think that he were trying to play games regarding his intent to harm us. Which is why we got no other choice to make sure that no one will be ever able to revive him again, even if that means that we have to resort to really dark and ancient magic ourselves. And this we'll do by separating his soul from his body and locking his soul away for good.Leone listens carefully to our statements and then starts to panic more and more. Especially when he finally spots the ancient Lich imprisoned in the icy wall.“No, please! You cannot do this to me! You are civilized people, aren't you. I am a gentleman! Let me go!”Carlyle then remorselessly picks the chained man up and presses him to the wall where the nameless Lich is imprisoned. Leone struggles against his grip, but fails to get free. We then pull out a gem and the Lich uses his magic to slowly extract Leone's soul against his final resistance and imprison it inside the gem. Seeing this procedure, Dr. Meredith/Flying Spark appear very much shocked by the visible struggle of the victim. However, Carlyle remains stoic as he lets go of the seemingly lifeless body of Leone. He then looks at the gem in his palm and shakes his head in disbelief.“I... really don't like the thought of keeping his soul imprisoned for an indefinite period of time. Just having this thing in my grasp makes me sick. It is the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve normally.”This time it is Auryn who's trying to comfort Carlyle's conflicted emotions.“I understand you. But we really got no other choice. And I promise you that we'll release his soul once all of this Obscurati madness is over.”We then let the Lich teach us his technique with the twist that we may implant our own souls into other people's bodies without having to basically kill them. We realize that the result might just be the very same effect that Nicodemus uses to possess other people and guess that the two kinds of magic might somehow be related, but the Lich tells us that he doesn't know anybody with this name, so it might be just a coincidence.Then Grappa slowly opens his eyes in the body of Leone and, for the first time, he appears to be all alone. It takes a while to fully control this new version of his and he guesses that it might take even longer for him to really learn Leone's metalbending tricks. Still he can tell us several details about Leone's most recent plans:His old host bought his private wagons to collect a group of Obscurati agents and bring them to the ObsCon. He remembers some details about the people he's supposed to collect, which is why he'd just continue where Leone left. He then tells us what he knows and we discuss whom of them might be the best candidates for us to take over. We also remind Dr. Meredith that she'd have to take one life to regain a body of her own, so she and we better choose carefully as we're not really comfortable with killing an “innocent”, even if said person is an Obs officer.Xambria Meredith thinks about the issue for a while and then decides that she would want to inhabit a female body again, with ethnicity being not so much an issue. So we read through Leone's list and find two female candidates with the Risuri Livia Hatsfield and the Crisillyiri Ines Shilubi.We ask Grappa a bit about the two and he explains that Leone knows Livia to be a spy in Torfield Palace while Ines appears to be a bounty hunter who got quite the reknown for hunting both fey and eladrin rebels for the Clergy. And while we agree that both women are criminals, each in their own way (from treason to murder), Ines is the one with the really wicked deeds. Auryn then asks to take on Livia as she'd be less comfortable with a human or dwarf man.“Alright then, I'll take one of the guys” says Margit with a short sigh and decides to inhabit the Clergyman known as Ken Don.(Dare I say that we were all a bit surprised to see that there was only a single female officer among the standard roster of Obs to inhabit? That, and 5/7 being humans as well. Tiz didn't want poor Dr. Meredith to be stuck in a male body forever and he surely didn't want us to kill Livia without knowing better, so he chose one really disposable officer from the expanded list of whom he was sure that we'd hate her enough by description alone.So if you're ever going to re-polish Zeitgeist... bring in the diversity among the playable Obs!Oh and regarding Auryn choosing Livia... she was the most relatable for her being an elven woman. She has no trouble playing a man in her own body as seen in her Aubron of Thessaries persona, but being in a foreign body is unnerving her a lot)Grappa then turns to the Lich to explain that we'd need one more person permanently extracted and that we'll need a bit more time to bring her here. The Lich grows a bit uneasy, but we agree to swear an ancient vow to release him as soon as we got her with us and after a bit of haggling, he finally agrees.So we dress up as Leone's bodyguards and accompany the metalbender on his trip to get all the Obs for the conference. This way, we got enough time to study all of their mannerisms and quirks, as well as get a feeling for their personality. It doesn't change our decisions though and Carlyle finally decides to take the Drakran dwarven tower researcher, Kiov Hetman, as his host body.(mainly because the whole tower affair seemed the most interesting background for our own information gathering)We travel along the Avery Coast Railroad and collect them all one by one until we reach Vendricce where Ines joins the small group. As soon as the party is full, we take the next opportunity during a stay at a railway enclave to abduct our targets with the Absurdist's Web. We bring them all to Knütpara where we ask Dr. Meredith one last time regarding her decision to kill Ines. But as the woman appears to be quite the boastful murderer we expected her to be, she stands with her decision.So we take the bounty hunter out of the Web and present her to the Lich. The ancient undead repeats the same process he did with Leone, and it takes him much effort to remove the powerful soul from her body. This time however, we let her soul slip into a splinter of ice which we melt to free her soul immediately. Carlyle then uses his experience with Dr. Meredith's soul and his powers as a spirit medium to transfer her soul from Flying Spark to Ines' body.When she awakes in her new form, the archaeologist first moves on four limbs as she has gotten used to the faerie dragon anatomy. But then, bit by bit she remembers her time as a human, stands on her legs and realizes that this body is so much stronger than the one she used to have. She thanks all of us (not the Lich of course) with a powerful group hug and declares that she'd love to join our mission in this body. And maybe work as archaeological expert for the RHC afterwards.Then it is finally time to release the nameless Lich. So we use the Ring of Triegenes to shatter the divine ward and break the remaining magical barrier. The Lich seems happy to be free from his prison once and for all, takes one step out of the ice and... shatters into pieces. We take quite the time to process what just happened and can only guess that someone or something must have destroyed the Lich's phylactery. Which is quite fortunate for us as we didn't have to fight him this way.(well played! Totally subverted our expectations with this one)Before we use our new knowledge to possess the other Ob officers, Auryn takes Carlyle aside for a private talk. When he asks her what this is about, she explains that the Obscurati conference might be a rather long event, spanning multiple days. Days in which the two of them won't be able to be close to one another as sharing intimacies as Livia Hatsfield and Kiov Hetman would be inappropriate in more than one way. Carlyle looks at her in surprise as he hadn't thought about that fact until now, but he understands that this whole situation is uncomfortable for both of them. Auryn then embraces him tightly and shares one last, passionate kiss with Carlyle before they return to Margit, Flying Spark and Dr. Meredith.</blockquote>

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