In the Name of My Brother

In the Name of My Brother is the 19th session of the New Dawn Memories campaign. It is the seventh session of the And Miles to Go before I Sleep story arc.
= Synopsis =
Manasa reunites with his seemingly amnesiac brother Atlas, but a conflict arises with Selies, who claims to have saved Atlas from his painful memories by taking his name. Meanwhile, Vani seeks revenge on the party for their previous actions.
= Development =
== Cold Open ==
In a flashback, we witness Lorkhan as a child finding a wounded bird in the field near the doumir camp he grew-up in. He takes the bird into his hands and tries to help it. As he does so, his hands start glowing with a strange light, and the bird is partially healed, but not enough to restore its health fully.
As he turns around to run back to his village with the bird in his hands, his mother, Soluna intercepts him. She takes his hands and tells him never to tell or show what he did to anyone. Lorkhan tells her that he just wanted to help the bird. His mother takes him into his arms and whispers to him that she knows that, but still not to tell anyone, especially not his father.
She then takes the wounded bird and puts her hands onto it, healing it with magic, the same way Lorkhan tried to earlier.
She whispers to him to give the bird a name and let it fly away. Lorkhan chooses the name Kiki and lets it fly into the air. The bird takes off with a youthful stride of its wings, while Soluna takes Lorkhan be his hand, and they go back to the village for supper.
== Part 1 ==
Manasa, Kilijan, and Mycha arrive at the camp fire Lorkhan started just before he and Weneon were attacked by the cyclops. Kilijan finds Weneon’s feywild token. Manasa inspects the trees around the campfire and figures out the direction the cyclops went.
Amnen arrives at the site, carrying the children with him. He tells them that this deep in the forest, cyclops are not a rarity but present in great numbers. Amnen then suggests going back to Brable to get the children to safety. Kilijan and Manasa tell him that they’re not going to do that, and ask him to follow them to the cyclop camp.
Amnen refuses and explains to them that it is dangerous to go deeper into the woods at this hour: especially with the children. He urges them once more to help get the children to safety, to which Manasa and Kilijan tell him that they don’t care about the children.
Mycha is conflicted and proposes Amnen to wait for them at the camp site where they are right now, as Amnen replies that Weneon and Kilijan were overrun by cyclops at this exact spot, and asks Mycha what chances he would have with two tiered children against something like that.
Amnen then takes the children and ties them to his back and his front, before making his way back through the dark woods.
As the party starts walking in the direction Manasa figured out, Mycha berates both of them for not having enough empathy for the children, to which Mansa and Kilijan answer that they are only concerned with the well-being of Weneon and Lorkhan.
In the meantime, Lorkhan awakens in the cyclops camp tied to a rock. He sees Weneon tied across from him to a rock as well before his body suddenly disappears and is transported Otto the feywild. The same happens to Lorkhan and the rest of the party.
== Part 2 ==
Arriving in the feywild, the party is well rested and greeted by Amidor and Melcior, who has just waken up and started putting on her armor. She tells them that they have to move since she sensed beasts nearby.
Manasa and Melcior get into an argument about belief, and Manasa mentions that he does not believe in any god. Melcior takes part of his speech as an insult towards her god, and she threatens to cut his throat if he failed god’s name in vain ever again in her presence. Manasa hears the voice of his patron Ashki commanding him to tell Melcior that he is his god. Manasa does so, to which Melcior laughs it off, telling Manasa that his faith is not well put into a being that grants such sinister powers.
Sure enough, three displacer beasts attack the party. Amidor fails to get his grip together, and Melcior has to heal him during the fight. She does the same with Kilijan at one moment as well. Once the three displacer beasts were slain, Manasa asks Melcior to heal him as well, to which Melcior says to ask his patron god snake to heal him.
They continue their journey towards Elminster’s tower, where Melcior hopes to find traces of Selena. Along the way, Amidor begs Lorkhan to forgive him for not being as useful in the fight as he could have been. Lorkhan consoles him by explaining that everyone in the party is understanding of it. He promises to Lorkhan to be useful next time.
As they travel, Melcior starts leading them to the western part of Hither, straying away from the path to the tower. She explains that they have to regroup in a nearby settlement before approaching the tower further.
Mycha notices a cat following them and relays it's suspicious to Melcior. She gives him a linen sack and instructs him to get rid of the cat if it’s bothering that much. Mycha manages to lure the cat to a spot with ratios. As the cat starts eating with tentacles on its back, Mycha realizes it’s a displacer kitten. He catches it in the sack and hands it to Melcior. She, however, refuses to take it, and tells Mycha to finish the deed himself. 
Manasa tells him that they used to smack cats in bags against hard stone in Neverwinter to end them, while Kilijan explains how the practice in their village was to just throw them into the river.
Mycha is confused of what to do, and hands the cat in the sack to Kilijan. Kilijan opens the sack and gives the cat some of his rations. The cat finds a liking to Kilijan, climbing onto his shoulder and hissing at Mycha. Mycha tries again to gain the cat’s trust, but to no avail. Kilijan tells Mycha to leave Pi alone, naming the cat simultaneously as such.
The party soon arrives at Vernes, a settlement of the vernes, a race of feywild creatures known for being extremely persistent in arguing about useless facts with the goal of taking one’s name.
A horde of vernes archers asks the party to identify their inter of coming to the village. Melcior explains that they seek shelter on behalf of the rightful queen Selena. The party realizes that the creatures are the same as the one they’ve found in the Thur woods when Vani started to chase them down.
Melcior tells them to keep the fact that they’ve killed one of them to themselves as they enter the settlement.
== Part 3 ==
The town’s head leader, Tiffiffanny, greets them and grants them a guest house to stay at and recoup. She asks them to give her their names, but the party refuses. Kilijan plays dumb and uses sign language to talk to Tiffiffanny. As she responds to him with sign language, Kilijan decides to conjure some set of zeros and ones, confusing her what he wanted to say.
They are led over a wooden bridge to Herbert, the guest house innkeeper, who gives them the idea of a key to the guest house.
The party soon learns that items of the Vernes are not materialized until needed. They are just concepts of the items, not bound to material form.
The party continues to the guest house, except for Manasa, who sees a human floating in the river beneath the bridge. The human appears to be relaxed. One blue vernes is following him, making sure he does not hit the river bank while floating.
As the human comes closer to the bridge, Manasa recognizes him: Atlas, his brother.
He calls him, and he interrupts his floating, standing up in the river with nothing but his shorts on. He comes up to Manasa, and Manasa hugs him. However, Atlas does not recognize neither Manasa nor the name Atlas.
Melcior, realizing what’s going on, comes up to Manasa and takes him away. Manasa hears the voice of Ashki telling him to burn the whole village down. Melcior tries to talk sense into the tearful Manasa by telling him that she understands what he is going through, but that he needs to keep his emotions together before acting irrationally. She then hugs him and heals him, trying to calm him down.
Kilijan and Amidor walk to the guest house. Amidor tells KIlijan about his prior experiences with the vernes and how he almost gave one of them his name. As they enter the mushroom-shaped house, Kilijan finally tells him to shut up. They Leah down and take a moment to relax. Kilijan summons a window onto the wall so Amidor can have some sunlight. Amidor then starts talking to Kilijan about his family as they share a bunk-bed.
Lorkhan and Mycha are approached by an old vernes as they walk towards the guest house. The old vernes introduces himself as Hithler and asks them if they’ve finished the job he asked them to do. Lorkhan, although not knowing what he’s talking about, immediately asks him for advanced payment. Hithler gives him the idea of a 300-gold-worth ruby and repeats to them that he expects the infestation of hangeron up the river to be dealt with.
== Part 4 ==
The entire party regroups at the guest house. Melcior shares with them the story of how she does not remember when or how she came from the material world into the feywild, but she knows it was more than 260 years ago. When asked about her family, she says she has an idea of having had a mother, of having had a father, of a hill with a swing she would play on while her father was reading his books on a bench nearby.
She does not remember, however, any names of any of the places or people she knew before. It simply was too long ago.
Outside of the guest house, the night lanterns light up and illuminate the village's streets in their soft orange light. Ashki speaks to Manasa to visit the only blue lantern in the village. Manasa does so: he gets up and leaves the guest house. Melcior looks after him, but does not say anything. As she finishes the apple she is eating, Amidor jumps up to take the apple stem into the trash for her.
Manasa walks down the village’s streets while the soft summer night fills the air with a layer of humidity. The streets are busy with verneses taking night walks, as Manasa spots a blue lantern at the other side of the central bridge he crossed earlier that day.
He approaches the blue lantern. The blue vernes who was with Atlas earlier that day steps out from behind it. He introduces himself as Selies and tells Manasa that the name he uttered earlier that day is not his to use. Manasa asks him what he did to Atlas, and Selies explains that he saved him from aweful memories by taking his name. Manasa tells him that he wants Atals’s name back, to which Selies replies that he will not allow to hurt Atlas by exposing him to the pain he made him forget.
Manasa demands from Selies to do as he says since it is his brother, to which Selies answers that he was Manasa’s brother only for twenty years, but he is his brother for more than 10 decades.
Selies then tells him that he will not allow Manasa and the rest of the party to take Atlas away from him, and that he found a solution how to get rid of them.
As Selies flies away, Manasa sees Vani standing at the other side of the bridge, slowly crossing it while unsheathing hi swords.
Vani telepathicaly tells Manasa that he and his companions will pay for what they did to him. Lorkhan, Mycha, and Kilijan run out to the streets and see Vani flying above the bridge ready to attack Manasa from above. “It ends here”, Vani says as he charges towards them.
Category:Sessions