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!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7827044" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 240, Part OneRevelation They decided to leave the ships floating at a safe distance and approach the wharf independently – variously flying, teleporting, using the stones discs. “Let’s not shoot first,” said Korrigan, telepathically before they left the ship. Gupta glowered; Quratulain loaded her vendetta bullet and kept a silent track of William Miller’s movements, aiming without aiming.As they drew closer, they Miller stood, took up a large basket of fruit that was hanging beside the bench and raised it in offering. He stepped towards them, smiling.“You hurt us!” cried Gupta as they landed.  “You hurt me!” She hit Miller with a bone-pointing curse. He cried out and fell to his knees, dropping the basket of fruit, which scattered across the wooden walkway. Some rolled off into the void.Miller gasped for breath, remaining on his hands and knees for a while. Then he raised a warding hand and said, “Please!  You can hurt, but cannot harm me. Whoever you think I am, I promise you that I…” he stopped, seeing the crown of Risur on Korrigan’s head. Then his gaze drifted down to the Humble Hook around his neck. “Did you come here for me?” he asked.“No,” said Korrigan.  “We did not expect to find you here.”“I expected you,” said Miller.  “Or something like you, some time soon. I hope that I can help you, though I know you may find it difficult to trust me. Despite how I look, I’m not your enemy. I’m his reflection, and five hundred years ago I broke off from him. If the Humble Hook chose you, I’ll help you, if you’ll let me, because when I look at my reflection now I don’t like what I see.“The first thing to know is that I’m arrogant. Five centuries ago I thought I could end a holy war holy war. My plan was to trick the Clergy into summoning its own god of war, which the eladrin would kill. The ritual warned that all the followers of the god would suffer the same fate as the one they worshipped. If my plan had worked it would have killed thousands of people. People who worshipped the same way I did. I didn’t care. I had been thwarted once, and I needed to succeed.“I was blind to the fact that I was a puppet. The Clergy used me to get the ritual – there was a demon, she wouldn’t tell them; it’s complicated. The hierarchs I hated so much summoned an eladrin goddess, killed her. When I figured it out I tried to escape, and I was caught in the middle of the backlash, right as I was straddling two sides of a portal. In the same moment that every eladrin woman died, I was torn in two.“So here I am, a ghost in a place of ghosts. You can imagine the impotent rage, but eventually I realized there was no point in that. Not too far from here I built a memorial to the goddess they killed, and to all the people who died because of me. This lighthouse, also, was my attempt at penance.” He gestured behind him and began to guide them towards it. “I thought if people came here, I could offer shelter or guidance. I suppose I’ve been waiting for you.“I don’t know what the other me is doing, exactly, but sometimes I have dreams, visions, snatches of awareness. Recently, ghosts have been showing up for months, and I’ve heard stories. Stories of what that other me is doing. That tell me my visions were real.”“‘The other me.’ Hell, this will get confusing. Look, it’s been centuries since I thought of myself as Nicodemus anyway. It was only a moniker. A ‘nick’ name, which my fellow monks gave me. There’s this herb from the Yerasol Islands called leaf of Nicodemus. You burn it, inhale the smoke. I remember loving the sensation. It was soothing. I dreamed of cultivating it and sharing it with more people around the world. But, well, there was a holy war. More pressing matters…” As he remembered the lead, he held up his ghostly cigarette, put it to his lips and sighed. He could no longer taste it.Quratulain made calculations.  Her bullet was not for him. She told the others this was not Nicodemus, and decided that – although it was William Miller who had trapped her in the Vault of Heresies – that she would not reveal herself to him. He clearly had not recognised her.They were now standing in the cluster of outbuildings at the foot of the lighthouse.Feeling suddenly sorry for Miller, Gupta apologised for her initial reaction and imbued him with the memory of the taste of leaf of Nicodemus. He thanked her, drew deeply on the cigarette, and smiled.   Then his smile faded as another memory returned.  “My accomplice in what I did was an eladrin woman named Kasvarina. Perhaps you have heard of her?  She suffered a great deal as a result of my actions.   She didn’t deserve what happened to her because of me.  I mention her only because I hope she is not your enemy too.  Nicodemus… I … We misled her, and whatever she has done since was done…”“Of her own volition, and is her sole responsibility,” said Kasvarina, suddenly revealing herself. She had been standing with Leon invisibly the whole time.The moment of their reunion blurred everything for a while.   Miller cried out, in greater pain than he had at Gupta’s bone-pointing. Kasvarina stood forward to help him, as it seemed as if he might collapse entirely. She uttered soothing words in response to his sobbed apologies and it became obvious that her presence had made it impossible for him to go on. The unit stood by haplessly until Kasvarina suggested that she take him inside and speak with him until he calmed down. They shrugged their acquiescence.  Everyone looked at Leon. If he was okay with it, they were.Uru returned.  While they were talking he had scouted around and found a trail leading off into the jungle. He had followed it for some distance, only to become aware of sensation of great power that dissuaded him from going on alone. Gupta was aware of it too, and given what Nicodemus said, was eager to follow the trail.Before she did so, everyone became aware of the rhythmic drumming that had accompanied their arrival, but went unnoticed until now. Uru said he had spotted a figure beating some drums round the other side of the lighthouse. They walked around and came across a strange sight: a skeleton, lanky and jaunty in a black cotton jacket with red epaulets and white buttons. He bobbed his whole upper body from side to side to the beat and greeted them enthusiastically. His name was Catahoula, a court wizard and masterful drum major from Iratha Ket, one of the nearby planes. When things became desperate on his world, Catahoula scried Ascetia and saw nothing to threaten him. Of the nearby world it was his best option, so he chose to teleport here blindly. He went on to explain the woes of his home, doing so in a song, conjuring magical music to accompany his tale. ...</blockquote>

Verification