The Widening Gyre Campaign/Session 7

The rest of the party watches as Zylch gives himself up to Leandra's Paradise. We mill around the ruins surrounding the ash cloud, debating what to do next. This area resembles the Capital District of an old Shantine City. Oddly, despite no maintenance for over 15 years, the ruins are relatively intact. Combine that with the odd time effects and the inability for the spawn to approach the Basilica, and the ruins present quite a mystery of their own, if only a secondary one. For now, what do we do? Risk making the jump, or run like hell?
Sylvia takes special notice of how the ash swallows Zylch up. She notices a few things:
* The sand appears solid when he starts falling, then gives way quickly, as though he's hit some sort of cavity.
* The sand has an etheric charge of some kind. Sylvia posits there's a possibility of the 2 seconds of stability being caused by an "etheric skinning" effect, as a temporary protection from null space.
* Upon throwing a bouncy ball into the ash, it skips across the sands for a bit before settling into the sand. It sinks slightly, holds for 2 seconds, and then drops.
The party decides (for the first time) to leave, as we feel the mission is no longer salvageable. Before we can hightail it out, Char'Li experiments by shooting a tracer round into the ash cloud. We watch as the bullet curves abnormally around the cloud, the sands rise as the bullet falls, meeting at a point on the horizon. There's also a near-imperceptible phase shift in color. He fires a slower, larger caliber round into the ash. It curves similarly, but the color shift is slightly less intense. The marines' morale has collapsed. Sylvia thinks back to the bouncy ball and recalls her own experience being sucked into null space, the sole survivor on her ship, and how she felt Noloth's protection. The party decides (for the second time) to leave the Basilica behind.
So how are all the exiles entangled with the Basilica? Is this related to their connection with Paradise? Is it acting on the soul? Oddly, being around this fixed point in time without the presence of automata gives the impression that none of it is real. Perhaps we could use Durham's body as an entanglement point… or why not implant The Kidney into a Knight of Leandra?
The party decides (for the third time) to leave, to report back their findings, determining the Basilica to be a lost cause. Karastes silently chides their progress, still sure this is a suicide mission. Sylvia is adamant she has Noloth's protection and wants to venture into the ash. Gundahar and The Kidney wait by one of the crawlers. Sylvia and Char'Li wait by the other crawler, and the students take notes. Everyone waits for Sylvia to jump in and (probably) die, but she decides to back out. The party decides (for the fourth time) to leave.
Meanwhile, Karastes has been staring at the horizon. He sees something in the sands. Something knows he can see it, and it blinks forward. He's now visibly terrified of whatever he sees. Suddenly, out of a reflection in the ash, there are more of them. Two from the left, two from the right. A fifth comes out of the ruins behind the party. The last one is massive, even compared to the others. What the hell are they? The Kidney surmises they're an offshoot of the Seraphim project, headed by the Knights of Leandra. One of them slices ribbons out of its own flesh with a knife. The largest one ("Big Boy") is holding an exile, with their voice box surgically removed, paralyzed from the neck down.
Big Boy snaps the exile's neck, breaking its own arms in the process. It then resets them. A third creature speaks up: "Forgive my brethren, they so rarely find themselves enfleshed. Tell me… what is it you're doing here, and why the Queen Bitch sent five of us?" Karastes takes this moment to finally snap out of his trance and start running away. The Kidney shoots Karastes, but he doesn't go down. He tries to get around Big Boy, but Big Boy catches up to him. Karastes isn't fully restrained and tries to overtake the grapple, but being weakened, he loses the struggle. Big Boy appreciates that Karastes is going down fighting and rips his arm off with glee. Knowing he has no other options, Karastes decides to be petty and deprive Big Boy of a fight, using the last of his strength to stab himself through the heart.
The Kidney appeals to the Seraphim-things, claiming the party was investigating the Exclusion Zone and killing Adarnans, and requesting help in doing so. The speaker ("Mr. Red") asks who sent the party in the first place while the rest of the Seraphim close in around them. The Kidney claims we're neutral, sent by some Aeldman organization, but isn't very convincing. The Seraphim pull out brass-hilted blades of some kind… which then ignite. They use these weapons to destroy the two crawlers. At this, Char'Li has had enough and runs for the hills, letting grenades fly at the Seraphim, and the rest of the marines follow him. Gundahar pointedly stays in place. The Kidney tries to calmly walk away but Mr. Red asks where it's going. Sylvia tries to understand their level of occult power, concluding it to be immense. The Kidney radios to the third crawler, ordering them not to leave without us.
The Seraphim-things show off their spooky powers: they're incredibly fast, for starters, their feet not contacting the ground. Char'Li's grenades deafen him, which seems bad at first, but it helps him focus on running, and he won't be able to hear Mr. Red letting out an unholy scream. They chase Char'Li and the marines down. Only one marine (Trip) makes it to the ruins. The smallest Seraphim-thing grabs Char'Li, who drops a primed grenade and tries to duck for cover. It pins him down over the grenade and counts down until the explosion. The blast instantly kills Char'Li, whose body embeds in its leg (a sight it finds curious). Stansfield is also caught, flailing wildly, and spitting at another of the creatures. In response, it kisses him, then eats into his face.
Sylvia has had enough of this violence and walks toward the ash, debating whether to jump in. Mr. Red stops her and says it has more questions. She stops and agrees to listen, and Mr. Red thanks her, then sits on one of the wrecked crawlers and starts questioning the party:
* Who do we really work for? The Kidney comes clean, saying we work for the Knights Mercantile, but we're an exploratory group, not a military group. The Kidney asks if Mr. Red knows about the Lidenian Political Machine, to which it says it doesn't.
* Mr. Red asks why we're here, and why we think they're here. The Kidney blames Zylch's bout of insanity as the action that summoned the creatures. (Meanwhile, Stansfield is having his arms ripped off.) The Kidney isn't sure why they're here, though, because if the Basilica is both standing and inaccessible, then why would Leandra have to send guards?
* Zylch's last-minute conversion caused special attention in this case, since new converts are exceedingly rare. Mr. Red says they're confused as to Zylch's unfinished business, since he's the "seventh or eighth of his kind" to come here. (Wait, what?)
* Mr. Red asks how we knew to come here. The Kidney mentions our employers and the photograph we were given, as well as our task to find the "preserved" Basilica. Gundahar mentions the radioactivity test he did, and questions how people go inside the Basilica, as well as when it exists.
Mr. Red seems to get irritated by this last question, scoffing about how Leandra "can't fucking let go" of anything. She has some sway over these creatures, keeping them here somehow, and Mr. Red asks us what we know that led her to summon five of them this time. Gundahar, in turn, asks if they're compelled to be here until a certain job has been done, and whether any of us have ever been here at another time. Mr. Red confirms that the creatures are sent here to deal with "bothersome invaders," though if they give useful information, they're not all that bothersome. It doesn't recognize any of us except for Zylch, who seems to show up every time…
Mr. Red requests us to tell it any information we know, ideally something useful. We offer to take it back to our employer, which it seems to ignore. Gundahar asks if this is because it's stuck here and can't disobey Leandra's orders. This angers Mr. Red. Gundahar then offers to use his weird plant physiology as collateral in some way, either by leaving part of himself here or turning himself into a walking bomb to destroy the KM from the inside. Sylvia offers up her old memories if it wanted to pick her brain. It does so but finds nothing there. The KM must have been thorough in creating facsimiles of our memories and leaving no traces behind. Mr. Red is not happy. It relives Sylvia's recollection of the null zone boat disaster with her.
Sylvia asks about the entanglement effects. Mr. Red says that Zylch is entangled with the BEZ somehow, as he keeps finding ways to return here, both in the past and the future. Despite not getting anything useful, it still appreciates her cooperation, then decides to focus on Gundahar. Gundahar has the distinct impression we've all been sent as guinea pigs and asks Mr. Red if any of us have a soul at this moment in time. Besides Zylch, none of us had an intact soul, simply echoes, or a facsimile, or none whatsoever.
At this point, it's apparent that these creatures perceive time in a different order from how we see it. The repeated appearances of Zylch in this area lead Gundahar to conclude that none of us are real, and we've been stuck in a time loop, much like the Fialta ghost ship we saw at the start of our mission. Mr. Red says it can't send anyone back at this point, as we've crossed some sort of event horizon (into the Matrix, perhaps?) but appreciates the effort we've all made to cooperate and save our own skins. The Kidney is displeased by this and takes a surprise shot at Mr. Red, piercing its heart. Surprised, Mr. Red screams (power word kill) at The Kidney, but this has no effect.
As chaos ensues, Sylvia takes her chance to end things on her own terms and jumps into the ash. Noloth is not there to protect her and the null space rips her apart, the last thing she feels being profound cold and loneliness. The creatures swarm the marines and most of the party besides Gundahar, who stands and watches. Two of them take out The Kidney, and Durham's body goes out shooting (and shitting). Big Boy goes after Gundahar, who's questioning why he's being killed. Big Boy simply responds that he "likes being enfleshed," and Gundahar firmly declares he's being repressed.
The Kidney is ripped from Durham's body and crushed separately. Mr. Red's last moments are spent trying to order another creature to save Gundahar to make some sort of deal happen. The other creature doesn't care about any deal, and calls Mr. Red a fool for being shot. It lets out one more scream, but this only manages to kill off Gundahar, who uses his own last moments to spread spores around the ruins. With none of the party left alive, the creatures mop up the rest of the crew (and the other crawler that waited for us) with extreme prejudice (another satisfying TPK!).
We should have left during one of those four times we said we would (if it was even possible to do so), but what's done is done. Post-TPK, we get a bit of extra lore:
* We did, in fact, escape our own reality and enter another one governed by an altered sense of perception. That strange effect Zylch had was the reality taking over since his own sight wasn't there to obfuscate it, he just had no idea how to use it effectively.
* Leandra is no longer a physical being, but a machine god that's been distributed across countless soul computers. Leandra's Paradise, then, is a realm contained within said computers (an alternate virtual reality that could be separated from this one), and Zylch was a clone sent on this mission to function as a sort of virus to disrupt Paradise. The Lidenians had no stake in whether we were able to survive, as they could upload a new clone and send him back repeatedly until the virus took hold.
* The creatures (3 of which were named after the fact: "Mr. Red" was Idrazihn, "Big Boy" was Zubrath, and the third that called Mr. Red a fool was Gahratel) were failed Seraphim of sorts. Idrazihn was, in fact, an angel of Leandra. None of them wished to be where they were, but they didn't have much of a choice or much else to do. Their chance of reopening the Pantheon War had already come and gone.
Was there actually a way to get into the Basilica without being taken back to the destruction of Bishant? Perhaps if we had been able to possess a Knight of Leandra, or possess one of the exiles… Had we had more firepower, we could have killed all the Seraphim or overloaded the effects of the null zone with an etheric explosion… Regardless, we went out fighting, and this is the end.
Category:Session Summaries