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[ZEITGEIST] The Continuing Adventures of Korrigan & Co.
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<blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7381145" data-attributes="member: 79141"><p><strong>Session 47, Part Four - The Great Malice</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Once again, apologies for wholesale duplication here, but there are one or two key amendments.</strong></p><p></p><p>As this event began to take shape, Kasvarina sagged and managed to croak out a warning that they need to make sure nothing disturbed this memory. She shouted at Borne and begged it not to interfere. The colossus peered closely at her but did not respond.</p><p></p><p>Uriel was also drawn into this event, and was too weary from the climb, the flood of memories, and the battle below, to avoid being entirely absorbed into the personality of Adriel – a young acolyte riddled with doubts about the path the clergy had chosen. Adriel was exhausted himself, having made the climb from below in order to speak more with the prisoner William Miller, by whom he had become transfixed. Here was a man who said everything he church ought to be saying, dressed in the robes of a poor itinerant monk. Adriel looked across at the rich robes and arrogant demeanour of the Grand Hierarch, then took up his place next to another young acolyte, a like-minded friend named Jierre. They made eye contact. Jierre did not like this any more than he did…</p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Kasvarina and the manifestation of Nicodemus stand at the top of the stairs, looking at the swath of floor made of amethyst and topaz. Plate-armored guards hold them tightly, and another half dozen such guards stand watch by the doors to the balconies. Rich gold lights glow magically behind each of the saint statues. Odd, tinny sounds of distant battle come from the balcony to the east, where a portal looks down at the fields of war outside Alais Primos. Two priests beside it manually adjust sliding, chevron-shaped lock-pieces to keep the portal open.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>In the centre of the chamber, an elder priest is directing four young acolytes to assemble the ritual for the sacrament of apotheosis. Entrails and blood of a lion, an eagle, a whale, and a dragon are arranged in a ring across the otherwise pristine floor, and two golden urns sits in the center, one empty, the other filled with a mixture of the animals’ blood. Other priests stand in the room’s corners, nervously discussing battle plans.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>One young paladin stands by the ritual, shirtless and proud, openly holding a sword that glows at the crosspiece with the holy symbol of the Clergy god of war.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>The high priest – bedecked in more gold and enchanted finery than the richest king – turns and claps his hands twice at the sight of Nic and Kasvarina. Nicodemus curtly tells Kasvarina, “This is Grand Hierarch Silvestri.”</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Silvestri thanks them for coming to witness the Clergy’s imminent second Victory. They tested the ritual and found that it does indeed work. He was tempted to just have the two of them executed, but he prefers to let them live as he agreed, so they can scuttle across the world as pariahs and traitors.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>He snaps a finger, and the guards produce chains and manacle Nicodemus and Kasvarina to the wall.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>With religious bombast, Silvestri addresses the gathered priests. “With this ritual, any warrior of our faith could become a vessel for a god. With holy sword in hand and blessed devotion guiding him, he could kill a thousand of the heathenous, brown masses.”</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Silvestri puts his hands on the shoulders of the shirtless paladin. “This man here, he could drive back the beasts from our doorstep. But that, I’m sure, is just what these two hoped for.”</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>He nods, and the guards begin kicking Nic and Kasvarina, metal boots drawing blood and dropping the pair to the floor. This continues as Silvestri talks.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>“No,” Silvestri rails, “one does not blindly accept the gift of a fiend. Once, our faith’s founder, Triegenes the fisherman-made-divine, used this rite to defeat the Demonocracy. Now the evil within those monsters have found new flesh in the eladrin. Killing a thousand with a holy blade will not purge the world of their apostasy. We must cut out their heart.”</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>He raises a hand, and the beating stops.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Unable to help himself, risking disruption, Leon used an old shamanic spell he knew to heal Kasvarina a little.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>“Within the hour, our foes’ race will be no more. Bring her.”</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Two priests head to the balcony to the south, and they begin adjusting the sliding chevrons around the edge of the platinum portal. It must be some failsafe mechanism to lock the portals down and prevent intruders from coming through. After a few seconds they have the lock open, and on the far side of the portal, a pair of guards hold a battered and bloody young woman.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>They step onto the tower and the portal slowly closes behind them as they drag their prisoner and throw her to the floor beside Kasvarina, who gasps and struggles against her chains to reach out. She cries out her younger daughter’s name, Dala. Dala coughs blood, looks up, and reaches out to her mother, but the shirtless paladin grabs her by her leg and drags her into the circle of entrails.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Nic and Kasvarina yell for them to stop, but in the span of less than a minute, a Clergy wizard dominates Dala, and the acolytes write the name of Srasama on her flesh with the animal blood. Guards hold down Kasvarina, slit open her palm, and bleed her to fill the second golden urn. They then feed the blood to the blank-eyed Dala.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>“With this sacrament,” Silvestri says, “we bless Dala, daughter of Kasvarina and faithful of the goddess Srasama. Bring forth the form of our enemy so that we might drag her down and sever the bloodline of all who worship beneath her infernal face.”</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Adriel looks at Kasvarina with pity, but then looks at everyone surrounding him and casts his eyes down. Jierre, too, is clenching his jaw with suppressed emotion. </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>At the grand hierarch’s direction, Dala recites the incantation of the ritual, and then her eyes begint to glow. A flaming six-armed nimbus appears behind her, the aspect of Srasama taking form. Amidst Kasvarina’s screams, four guards grab Dala and carry her toward the portal to Alais Primos. She’s already growing, and is nearly ten feet tall when they manage to hurl her through the portal. She falls to the earth and her titanic form creates a crater.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>The guards then unloop Nic and Kasvarina’s chains from the wall and pull them to the middle of the balcony. Silvestri stands behind them, forcing them to watch as halfway across the world Dala transforms into the towering goddess, armed with six flaming swords. All throughout, two priests hold the portal open by manipulating the chevron locks.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Silvestri tells another priest to lower the shield over the city to let her in, and then reminds him to have the warriors say her name as they attack. He feigns forgetfulness and leans down beside Kasvarina, asking what her daughter’s name was again. She pulls at her chains and tries to bite him. He responds by kicking her, stomping her chest, and holding her to the ground. He tells her this is her punishment for the hubris of thinking she could defeat the Clergy. All that will happen to her people is what she would have done to his.</em></p><p></p><p>(Unnoticed by Silvestri, the chain around his neck detaches itself and falls to the floor…)</p><p></p><p><em>Looking up at the cardinal, Nicodemus tries to plead, to no avail. But Adriel has had enough: he steps in behind Silvestri and stabs him with a holy dagger. Although Silvestri’s warded flesh is as tough as armour, the blow is hard enough, and devout enough, to agonise him and enough to set off a desperate battle on the balcony between the guards and Adriel, who has been joined in his mutiny by Jierre, who fends off the guards with blazing radiant spells. The two priests holding the portal open hesitate, but don’t join the fray.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Through the portal the avatar of Srasma leads the amazed and cheering eladrin through the city walls, only to then be struck by arrows and spells and the swords of summoned angels. It takes but a minute for her to sag, fall to the ground, and be set upon by hundreds of humans. She screams, and thousands of other women scream with her.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Silvestri is about to crush the traitorous acolyte’s head with a mace when the screams distract him and the guards holding Kasvarina and Nicodemus. They rise and body-check the grand hierarch through the balcony railing. He starts to plummet, but catches Kasvarina’s chain. She swings bodily out over the void, arms pulled down by the dangling Silvestri. A guard grabs her legs and tries to pull her back, yelling for help. The priests at the portal step away from their duty.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p> <em>Nicodemus sees his chance. He grabs the injured Adriel, drags him to his feet and pushes him through the portal ahead of him. Then he turns and looks back for Kasvarina. Just then, an inferno bursts forth from Srasama’s wounds, and though it stops at the edge of the portal, when it abates there is no sign of Nicodemus. A moment later the portal’s locks slide it shut.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>A few moments later, the rebels are subdued. Two guards and an acolyte lie dead. Jierre slumps, bleeding, against the central chamber wall.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Kasvarina is pulled back up along with Silvestri, who staggers back into the central chamber. He orders the portal reopened so they can witness the destruction. </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Suddenly, every human in the memory event, bends over in agony as horns begin to grow on their heads, and their skin turns deep crimson. The lights in the tower flicker and die, the stones begin to creak, and the central gems crack. Kasvarina stands weakly, pulls a sword from a helpless guard, and crudely decapitates Silvestri.</em></p><p></p><p>Suddenly the Arc began to glow on her head and her eyes widened. Brought back into the present, she gasped in wonder. Light from the Arc streamed upward in a beam. Outside, Borne gave a rumbling moan and debris fell from the ceiling.</p><p></p><p>“Now I understand!” she gasped. “All of it! By the goddess!” She looked at Leon. “Not just the past. Everything!” Her expression shifted from wonder to intensity. “I have to leave this place. Now! The portals…” </p><p></p><p>Before she could say anything else, or move to obey her own impulses, she became helplessly transfixed by the light from the Arc as it blazed even more brightly. Borne groaned again, a deep rumble that challenged the integrity of the tower.</p><p></p><p>Time itself seemed to stop. Everyone was looking at Kasvarina.</p><p></p><p>Looking back, some of them would say they caught the scent of Leaf of Nicodemus just seconds before he arrived: at full speed, but seeming to move in slow motion, wearing Andrei’s body, trailing smoke or spirits or both. As he ran, his arm arced outward, and four green globes span across the chamber to shatter in clouds of thick, dense gas.</p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>End of Session</strong></p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EOlZyD26T4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EOlZyD26T4</a></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="gideonpepys, post: 7381145, member: 79141"] [b]Session 47, Part Four - The Great Malice[/b] [B]Once again, apologies for wholesale duplication here, but there are one or two key amendments.[/B] As this event began to take shape, Kasvarina sagged and managed to croak out a warning that they need to make sure nothing disturbed this memory. She shouted at Borne and begged it not to interfere. The colossus peered closely at her but did not respond. Uriel was also drawn into this event, and was too weary from the climb, the flood of memories, and the battle below, to avoid being entirely absorbed into the personality of Adriel – a young acolyte riddled with doubts about the path the clergy had chosen. Adriel was exhausted himself, having made the climb from below in order to speak more with the prisoner William Miller, by whom he had become transfixed. Here was a man who said everything he church ought to be saying, dressed in the robes of a poor itinerant monk. Adriel looked across at the rich robes and arrogant demeanour of the Grand Hierarch, then took up his place next to another young acolyte, a like-minded friend named Jierre. They made eye contact. Jierre did not like this any more than he did… [I] Kasvarina and the manifestation of Nicodemus stand at the top of the stairs, looking at the swath of floor made of amethyst and topaz. Plate-armored guards hold them tightly, and another half dozen such guards stand watch by the doors to the balconies. Rich gold lights glow magically behind each of the saint statues. Odd, tinny sounds of distant battle come from the balcony to the east, where a portal looks down at the fields of war outside Alais Primos. Two priests beside it manually adjust sliding, chevron-shaped lock-pieces to keep the portal open. In the centre of the chamber, an elder priest is directing four young acolytes to assemble the ritual for the sacrament of apotheosis. Entrails and blood of a lion, an eagle, a whale, and a dragon are arranged in a ring across the otherwise pristine floor, and two golden urns sits in the center, one empty, the other filled with a mixture of the animals’ blood. Other priests stand in the room’s corners, nervously discussing battle plans. One young paladin stands by the ritual, shirtless and proud, openly holding a sword that glows at the crosspiece with the holy symbol of the Clergy god of war. The high priest – bedecked in more gold and enchanted finery than the richest king – turns and claps his hands twice at the sight of Nic and Kasvarina. Nicodemus curtly tells Kasvarina, “This is Grand Hierarch Silvestri.” Silvestri thanks them for coming to witness the Clergy’s imminent second Victory. They tested the ritual and found that it does indeed work. He was tempted to just have the two of them executed, but he prefers to let them live as he agreed, so they can scuttle across the world as pariahs and traitors. He snaps a finger, and the guards produce chains and manacle Nicodemus and Kasvarina to the wall. With religious bombast, Silvestri addresses the gathered priests. “With this ritual, any warrior of our faith could become a vessel for a god. With holy sword in hand and blessed devotion guiding him, he could kill a thousand of the heathenous, brown masses.” Silvestri puts his hands on the shoulders of the shirtless paladin. “This man here, he could drive back the beasts from our doorstep. But that, I’m sure, is just what these two hoped for.” He nods, and the guards begin kicking Nic and Kasvarina, metal boots drawing blood and dropping the pair to the floor. This continues as Silvestri talks. “No,” Silvestri rails, “one does not blindly accept the gift of a fiend. Once, our faith’s founder, Triegenes the fisherman-made-divine, used this rite to defeat the Demonocracy. Now the evil within those monsters have found new flesh in the eladrin. Killing a thousand with a holy blade will not purge the world of their apostasy. We must cut out their heart.” He raises a hand, and the beating stops. Unable to help himself, risking disruption, Leon used an old shamanic spell he knew to heal Kasvarina a little. “Within the hour, our foes’ race will be no more. Bring her.” Two priests head to the balcony to the south, and they begin adjusting the sliding chevrons around the edge of the platinum portal. It must be some failsafe mechanism to lock the portals down and prevent intruders from coming through. After a few seconds they have the lock open, and on the far side of the portal, a pair of guards hold a battered and bloody young woman. They step onto the tower and the portal slowly closes behind them as they drag their prisoner and throw her to the floor beside Kasvarina, who gasps and struggles against her chains to reach out. She cries out her younger daughter’s name, Dala. Dala coughs blood, looks up, and reaches out to her mother, but the shirtless paladin grabs her by her leg and drags her into the circle of entrails. Nic and Kasvarina yell for them to stop, but in the span of less than a minute, a Clergy wizard dominates Dala, and the acolytes write the name of Srasama on her flesh with the animal blood. Guards hold down Kasvarina, slit open her palm, and bleed her to fill the second golden urn. They then feed the blood to the blank-eyed Dala. “With this sacrament,” Silvestri says, “we bless Dala, daughter of Kasvarina and faithful of the goddess Srasama. Bring forth the form of our enemy so that we might drag her down and sever the bloodline of all who worship beneath her infernal face.” Adriel looks at Kasvarina with pity, but then looks at everyone surrounding him and casts his eyes down. Jierre, too, is clenching his jaw with suppressed emotion. At the grand hierarch’s direction, Dala recites the incantation of the ritual, and then her eyes begint to glow. A flaming six-armed nimbus appears behind her, the aspect of Srasama taking form. Amidst Kasvarina’s screams, four guards grab Dala and carry her toward the portal to Alais Primos. She’s already growing, and is nearly ten feet tall when they manage to hurl her through the portal. She falls to the earth and her titanic form creates a crater. The guards then unloop Nic and Kasvarina’s chains from the wall and pull them to the middle of the balcony. Silvestri stands behind them, forcing them to watch as halfway across the world Dala transforms into the towering goddess, armed with six flaming swords. All throughout, two priests hold the portal open by manipulating the chevron locks. Silvestri tells another priest to lower the shield over the city to let her in, and then reminds him to have the warriors say her name as they attack. He feigns forgetfulness and leans down beside Kasvarina, asking what her daughter’s name was again. She pulls at her chains and tries to bite him. He responds by kicking her, stomping her chest, and holding her to the ground. He tells her this is her punishment for the hubris of thinking she could defeat the Clergy. All that will happen to her people is what she would have done to his.[/I] (Unnoticed by Silvestri, the chain around his neck detaches itself and falls to the floor…) [I]Looking up at the cardinal, Nicodemus tries to plead, to no avail. But Adriel has had enough: he steps in behind Silvestri and stabs him with a holy dagger. Although Silvestri’s warded flesh is as tough as armour, the blow is hard enough, and devout enough, to agonise him and enough to set off a desperate battle on the balcony between the guards and Adriel, who has been joined in his mutiny by Jierre, who fends off the guards with blazing radiant spells. The two priests holding the portal open hesitate, but don’t join the fray. Through the portal the avatar of Srasma leads the amazed and cheering eladrin through the city walls, only to then be struck by arrows and spells and the swords of summoned angels. It takes but a minute for her to sag, fall to the ground, and be set upon by hundreds of humans. She screams, and thousands of other women scream with her. Silvestri is about to crush the traitorous acolyte’s head with a mace when the screams distract him and the guards holding Kasvarina and Nicodemus. They rise and body-check the grand hierarch through the balcony railing. He starts to plummet, but catches Kasvarina’s chain. She swings bodily out over the void, arms pulled down by the dangling Silvestri. A guard grabs her legs and tries to pull her back, yelling for help. The priests at the portal step away from their duty. Nicodemus sees his chance. He grabs the injured Adriel, drags him to his feet and pushes him through the portal ahead of him. Then he turns and looks back for Kasvarina. Just then, an inferno bursts forth from Srasama’s wounds, and though it stops at the edge of the portal, when it abates there is no sign of Nicodemus. A moment later the portal’s locks slide it shut. A few moments later, the rebels are subdued. Two guards and an acolyte lie dead. Jierre slumps, bleeding, against the central chamber wall. Kasvarina is pulled back up along with Silvestri, who staggers back into the central chamber. He orders the portal reopened so they can witness the destruction. Suddenly, every human in the memory event, bends over in agony as horns begin to grow on their heads, and their skin turns deep crimson. The lights in the tower flicker and die, the stones begin to creak, and the central gems crack. Kasvarina stands weakly, pulls a sword from a helpless guard, and crudely decapitates Silvestri.[/I] Suddenly the Arc began to glow on her head and her eyes widened. Brought back into the present, she gasped in wonder. Light from the Arc streamed upward in a beam. Outside, Borne gave a rumbling moan and debris fell from the ceiling. “Now I understand!” she gasped. “All of it! By the goddess!” She looked at Leon. “Not just the past. Everything!” Her expression shifted from wonder to intensity. “I have to leave this place. Now! The portals…” Before she could say anything else, or move to obey her own impulses, she became helplessly transfixed by the light from the Arc as it blazed even more brightly. Borne groaned again, a deep rumble that challenged the integrity of the tower. Time itself seemed to stop. Everyone was looking at Kasvarina. Looking back, some of them would say they caught the scent of Leaf of Nicodemus just seconds before he arrived: at full speed, but seeming to move in slow motion, wearing Andrei’s body, trailing smoke or spirits or both. As he ran, his arm arced outward, and four green globes span across the chamber to shatter in clouds of thick, dense gas. [B] End of Session[/B] [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EOlZyD26T4[/url] [/QUOTE]
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