The Pantheon War Campaign/Session 4

Tribal longhouse
*Tome and Haruspex try to be impressive as they enter the royal receiving hall. Elesett does it accidentally. Haruspex is the scariest. We are the three musketeers, and sidestep our way down the hall towards the queen. 
**Erena is quite young – 18 or 19 – and is delighted that we've offended her courtiers.
**Haruspex bends the knee. Elesett and Tome bow slightly. 
*Erena demands to see the bird, and reluctant servants fetch him. Asks if he can talk, and says, when he cannot, that brains and beauty do not always go together. (Screecher rolls his eyes behind his mask.) 
*She wants the party to investigate some rumors.
*Amarak is seated (the only one besides the Queen) beneath the throne and is the one who relays details of our mission—this time with his voice, for ceremony
*Mission:
**For some months, nothing has been heard from the Kingdom of Amaranthia 
**Scouts report that there rises black smoke above the cities and there are reports of madness descending upon the people
**Rumors abound of a hole appearing in the sky and something descending from it, or the land rushing up to meet that hole in the sky
**No word of the King, … or of the Abomination. No one who has seen it comes back sane.
**Scouts circle the Kingdom looking for anyone who can tell what us what's happening - or to keep them out
**We are to identify the threat, ascertain the status of the King, and resolve the threat or bring back information to deal with the Abomination
*Three other kingdoms on this planet besides Erena's; the one in question, Aramanthia, is a vassal of one of the others, Verena (hence sending foreign agents like us—looks less like an invasion force). 
*Those who survive will be granted a prize from the vaults of the Kingdom and we can keep any treasure we find on our quest (assuming there is not a King to claim it as part of his Kingdom) (
*Verena, the kingdom ruling Amaranthia, began with knights from beyond the world. Amaranthia is an earlier surviving kingdom and was essentially absorbed; lost portions to Atarkia; armies of Verena guaranteed Amaranthia independence. 
**If no Amaranthia left to defend, it's open season in the river valley (unless, of course, it's cursed)
*We send Haruspex and Maestro Sunrose to check out the few dozen books that the Queen may have. They are all written in local languages and unintelligible to us
*Can we get some of that material the gates are made of? It's said it came from an ancient (interplanetary) sailing vessel — perhaps the nomads might have more.
*Refugees from the kingdom? Yes, in a camp in a gully between the mountains.
*We get a map.
*Route options: 
**Direct route: Overland on the Queen's road, then over the mountains
**Secret route: North then via plains; disputed by Verena. If we can go through quietly, it'd get us in away from major cities
**Roundabout route: South, crossing a great lake, landing among bluffs or via a port / cove. Could commission a ship, letting us move up & down the coastline, which might facilitate moving resources. Less convenient but safer
Haruspex talks to Amaranthians in the city
*What's the smoke? 
**Probs burning cities.
*Old stories from Amaranthians' ancestors:
**They left their old world fleeing... something; concerned about implication (whether they believe it or not) that they brought the Abomination upon this world
**Hole in the sky? Our ancestors had to come from somewhere. Mixes well with their national origin myth. Perhaps something else could have come through this same way. 
*Local religions? 
**Some (filtered) Falamar worship
**Atark, patron founder of the kingdom (by their lore, Falamar was a blood companion), elevated to a national god
**Locals worship Atark, his companions, wife, or son
**And Amaranthis? Worship the Life River. Don't worship gods as personalities or beings, but animist: life of the river and life of the coast; perpetual motion connects to them spiritually / culturally. Superstitious stories about phenomena they don't understand; some higher concepts that they hold sacred
***Some ancestral worship, in the sense of telling the stories (but maybe an Atarkian lens on Amaranthian history)
*Interplanetary contact? Very rare.
**Atarkia has the most such contacts, according to the Amaranthians, who appear to avoid them
*It feels like they're not telling us the whole truth… because they don't know it. There are lots of second- or third-generation Amaranthians, but not a single native Amaranthian in this city. 
**w.r.t. Atarkia, they were a historic enemy, then trade partner, then vassal to an enemy
Amarak
*We call on Amarak, who brings us to a walled garden and a running fountain (rare here). 
*Has traveled to Amaranthian multiple times; knows the people & the land
*Why no native Amaranthians? 
**Many were distressed to hear that their kingdom had gone silent… went looking for friends and family, then came back, and of course couldn't be allowed in
*Is this Abomination-induced madness contagious? 
**Bad ideas are infectious. 
**Who knows how many people in kingdom have Amaranthian blood
**Anyone who has left and come back could repeat madness, which would be intolerable. (Language is the power to make people feel things, and some things cannot be felt responsibly.) Something has caused madness throughout the kingdom.
*Does he have a notion of what this idea is? A bit, but of course can't repeat it. 
*Can he read minds? Yes, at least general ideas. 
Local Amaranthians again
*Is this precedented? No, they've been briefly detained (when army from Verena crossed over), but not deported
How to travel?
*Send the mercenaries to meet us later by ship
*We'll go via the mountain path so we can go to the refugee camp
*Screecher pretends to go with the ship, getting "deputized" to lead Tome's men
*Once they are sufficiently far out, Screecher sings a parting song, but suggests to the Hootenanies this is only the first piece of their longer arc together. Two throw themselves overboard as he leaves; noting reluctantly that they have no other hope of surviving, he swoops down and saves them, delivering them back to the ship, before leaving again (as they are lashed to the mast) with a joyful adventure song 
*Flying back to the party along the mountaintops, Screecher observes: 
**The valley has its own wind patterns, and the perhaps supernaturally strong winds stop at the mountains. (He could fly very fast counterclockwise around the valley, but not well at all the other way)
**Does see the dark smoke rising from fires
**Sees multiple cities, which do not appear to be on fire
**As the light of the ether fades, another light high up in the sky (the center of the great weather system) appears for just a moment
**Screecher tries to investigate; looks down into the valley & feels dizzy; decides it might be deadly to look up. Then, there is no up if he does not perceive it. 
**There are still columns of smoke, but Screecher can't see any fire…
**He roosts in the mountains… and the mountain birds are feeling incredibly claustrophobic
***Cannot accept (cannot countenance) and yet cannot ignore the imposition on their reality
***Not lifelong, but a seasonal phenomenon: an irregularity
**Screecher tries to calm them to sleep. He fails; they are angered & summon swarms of additional birds. 
**He takes off his mask & shows them his "mundane horror". It serves as contrast to show them the otherworldly horror of the Abomination… and most of them die as they perceive this. 
Rest of the party, approaching the refugee camp
*Pass a guard tower and a steep climb
*Swampy waters peak over a precipitous dropoff
*One guard says the refugees are overwhelmed with joy at the return of their gods. The guards have taken to stuffing their ears with wax. 
**Haruspex reaches out… a frenzy blunted by hunger & desperation. People down there are dying… and they're frenzied about it. Like during a seizure or a fit ("the simultaneous totality and absence of cognition"). No particular attendant emotions—not happy, sad, angry, or lost—just frenzied.
**Some normal activities, and lots of looking up in rapt expectation.
*We descend; people are emaciated (as if not enough food)
*They're trying to harvest overly salted water from the rock faces, filtering it through moss
*Uneven, lumpy mound at the end of the valley (appears to be a mass grave)
**Gets less sophisticated as it rises (as the survivors become exhausted)
**No vermin—the valley is barren
**Haruspex investigates; they appear to have died not of malnutrition but failure of the tissues… that is, their bodies started making the wrong tissues.
***Damaged & dying tissue was being replaced incorrectly. 
***Bones too thick; skin too thin; very healthy extra rear teeth while front teeth are rotted and damaged through normal wear
**Their souls are not irregular, imperfect, or uneven the way that normal souls are, but instead very uniform. These are all individuals, with their own minds, but they all have the same smooth pattern of soul… 
**Elesett tries to figure out what's going on with their souls; she accidentally draws all of their attention, and the refugees gather around her. She lights a torch and tries to extract their secrets: Their souls are all in shock (like shocked quartz): very smooth, uniform, and with uniform disorders. With effort, she prevents herself from incinerating all of them. They turn away, not wanting to look at her, though unable to do anything about her presence
*Tome sees aetheric energy traced onto the walls of rock. Not much other material culture. Children have no toys, even handmade; adults have no jewelry or status markers. There is a large stockpile of food, of which they are not at all protective…. "they're very well-fed— they're just not being nourished."
*Tome & Elesett & Haruspex go to leave; the refugees ask Haruspex to stay and watch. (They feel sorry for him that they can't force him to watch.) As the aether lightens the sky at dawn like golden ink spilling onto a dark canvas, their arms trace its path down the mountain and, as it hits them, they hang rigid and suspended for a beat——then return to going through the motions, and wait for the next liminal moment.
Category:Session Summaries