NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7279050" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 31, Part One - The Perpetual CityBefore travelling all the way to the Perpetual City, they decided to pursue Uriel’s nagging awareness of much closer memories, which he had experienced since his first contact with the Arc.  The direction was southward, but not having any idea of distance, they swiftly teleported to Vigil Longis in an attempt to triangulate.  Two lines on a map suggested a point about twenty miles south.  On flying phantom steeds, they covered the distance in no time.  Once there, Uriel was beset by a host of competing sensations, and used Hand of Fate to narrow them down.  Following the direction of this ritual brought them to the ruins of a long-abandoned village, where the Arc caused a memory to manifest.  To their surprise, the memory event was real – not an image or illusion that could be pierced by Leon’s truesight.  Uriel was entirely swept up by the event and took on the appearance of his former self – a deva named Talmai.Through their observation of a montage of events, it emerged that he had lived in the village for a long time, receiving tutelage in Seedism.  One elder eladrin said that their religion was much the same as the one now practised in the human realm of Risur, “though the humans make the mistake of worshipping the beasts we regard as brethren”.  Towards the end of this sequence, Talmai donned more elaborate robe, as an indication of his growing status. The event ended as he prepared to lead a squadron of rajput against another clergy incursion. Then Uriel found that, although he did not remember much else about Talmai’s life, when he looked about him, he could identify plants and animals that had been strange to him before. Their names came to him in Elvish (and he also had a smattering of Dwarven).  He felt certain that in order to learn more, he needed to revisit the end of each incarnation, no matter how painful or traumatic that was.To that end, they travelled far to the east, shadow-walking on phantom steeds to arrive at the edge of a huge crater just as the sun began to set.  They already knew something of the history of the place: that the architecture of the buildings carved into its walls matched that of the early clergy; that the scholar who had first proposed a shared heritage between the two belief systems had been burned as a heretic; that the eladrin believed the site was a place of great evil.They witnessed one such evil during the memory event that had drawn them here: Wielding a mighty white staff, Talmai approached the lip of the crater, closed his eyes and drew a sharp breath before he turned to dismiss the troop of eladrin warriors gathered behind him.  They referred to him as ‘Hierophant’ now and were reluctant to withdraw. The Hierophant told them that the humans had released a demon – whether by accident, or on purpose, to foil pursuit.  As he spoke, the demon rose above the lip of the crater, flying on wings of shadow.  The rest of its huge body was corporeal, humanoid and muscular, though its head resembled that of both a shark and a rhinoceros.  A great battle began in which the Hierophant hurled druidic magic at the demon and it responded with terrible blows and infernal heat.  The unit found themselves beset by this fire and withdrew.  Suddenly, the battle took a turn for the worse when the demon shattered the Hierophant’s staff.  Uriel fell back and the demon moved to make the killing blow.Matunaaga whisked Uriel away telepathically and Leon moved him further still.  The memory event collapsed leaving Uriel dazed and disoriented.  They had hit a snag.  If Uriel had to relive his own death, and the memory events were not illusory, then he would be killed; nothing more than a road-bump for a deva, but they did not have time to wait for him to reincarnate, or to search the jungle for him when he did.  Uriel proposed that they try to fight and beat the demon, but Gupta shook her head.  She had stared in wonder at the memory and knew that Uriel would have to relive the exact events to access his prior self.  Then Rumdoom said that if this was not Uriel’s time to die, he would prevent him from doing so.They approached the lip of the crater again and the memory event restarted.  This time, the Hierophant was allowed to perish at the hands of the demon and the memory event ended.  Rumdoom was true to his word, but Uriel was still unconscious and very badly injured.  They withdrew from the crater, set up camp and set about healing him.  During the night, despite Uru’s shadowy wards that should have concealed them from view, their campsite was approached by a group of elderly eladrin hermits.  They had seen what had transpired and wanted to meet the reincarnation of the Hierophant, who was by now conscious, if a little shaken.  They questioned the group, and were relieved to learn that they had no intention of entering the Perpetual City.  These hermits lived here for the sole purpose of protecting the place from intrusion, but the unit had shadow-walked right through their wards!  Once their concerns had been laid to rest, they produced the broken pieces of the Staff of the Hierophant and gave them to Uriel.  (They could not say what had become of the demon; perhaps it lived in the jungle still, or perhaps the clergy had caged it once again?)Uriel now knew something of the Hierophant’s power and found he was able to produce fire seeds and grasping foliage.  But he still did not feel like ‘Talmai’, and did not have all of his memories.  Gupta asked him what it had been like for him to die, as her experiences had been sad and frightening.  Uriel said that for him death was a new beginning. (In this case, he knew that he had reincarnated in the middle of a clergy encampment! They must have known this was a reincarnation of the deva they had just defeated; they kept him divorced from his old memories and planned to return him to the fold back in Crisillyir.)  Rumdoom joined in their conversation and talked quite eloquently about his interpretation of the Heid Eschatol, ‘Rumschatology’.  Then he opened up about what had been haunting him these past few months, and had caused him to freeze during the Vision of the far Future:When he was at the height of his confidence, about two-and-a-half years after arriving in Trekhom and setting up the Cult of Rumschatology there, Rumdoom realised that if he was able to decide in the moment if a person’s 'ending' was 'good' or not, then surely it must be possible for him to know what their best ending would be – in other words, what he was saving them for.  In pursuit of this knowledge, he began to experiment with meditation (which he wasn't very good at) and, when that failed, with increasingly powerful hallucinogenics.   Eventually, this led to a vision in which Rumdoom saw his own ending.  It frightened him, so he dismissed it at first, but it recurred with greater clarity: Rumdoom stands beneath an empty sky – no stars, moon or sun – though the occasional chunk of debris hurtles by like a meteor.  That emptiness is a key feature of the dream; he knows it is somehow important, not a mere absence of clarity.  Alongside him are members of the unit, and others, who he does not recognise. They are exhausted, having fought some terrible, final battle, from which they have emerged victorious. And yet a sense of doom or deflation pervades.Each one of them nods in agreement, acknowledging that the time has come – that their work is done.  A decision has already been taken, and now they merely act in accordance with it.  They walk to the edge of a precipice and look down.  The ground beneath their feet is silvery bright and metallic; above them, inky blackness.  But below, there is a churning maelstrom that seems to be drawing everything towards it.  Rumdoom and his friends steel themselves.  There is nothing more to be done.  Their fight is over and their presence in this world is nothing more than a hindrance now. Some words are spoken, shouted over but lost on the wind. There is a final moment of hesitation. Then together, as one - some hand-in-hand, even - they leap into the gyre.  Rumdoom feels the vertiginous lurch, the rush, the wind, the pressure, the pain, as he and his friends are torn apart and ended.To begin with he convinced himself to dismiss the vision.  After all, he was no longer part of the unit – he had retired.  But he had spent the whole time in Trekhom secretly hoping that Korrigan would call him back into action.  Now that hope was tainted by the knowledge that he was hoping for the vision to prove true.  So he went off the rails, Rumdoom-style and only really came round once he had rejoined the unit in Seobriga. But the more he enjoyed being back in the unit, the more guilty he felt because he believed that he was in some way wishing for them to come to ending he had foreseen.  Since talking to the priest at the temple of Ingatan Rumdoom had come to the conclusion that he ought to tell them, but couldn't quite bring himself to do so.  But the final vision in Ingatan’s Refuge so closely matched the events of his premonition that he froze, endangering them all. So he decided it was time to come clean.His confession brought about a silence which persisted until morning.</blockquote>

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