The Hospitality One-Shot

was a One-Shot that occurred around and concerned the eradication of The Guest.
== Background ==
The one-shot takes place in the aftermath of the Pantheon War. Any divinities existing outside of the Partition are in the process of being hunted down by the Great Pantheon and either brought to heel or destroyed. The party is a group of angels who are pursuing one such eldritch being, a mysterious entity known as "The Guest".
The Guest is a shapeshifter, only ever appearing as an amalgam of memories or as a person that the observer only vaguely recalls. It is always humanoid, but its appearance and movement always looks "mirrored", as if it is being reflected. Prior to the Partition, The Guest would wander amid the courts of other gods, always seeking to blend in and hide out but never truly belonging anywhere. It inflicts wounds upon those who recognize its uninvited presence. The party members have all been wounded by The Guest in the past, which gives them the ability to communicate about The Guest's existence and to recognize when it is present.
At the time of the one-shot, The Guest is believed to have been confined to a location known as "The Afterparty", where the fugitive god Falamar's hangers-on linger in the remains of his former court.
== Characters ==
=== Player Characters ===
Character 	Player 	Description
Galtha, angel of Adalna 	Craig 	Precognizant esotericist and occultist with a magic shield
Gryling, angel of Korbog 	Karl 	Cantankerous weapons-lover and architecture-hater
Velos the Avenger, angel of Shantara	Kristen	Ill-favoured sneak and backstabber with a magic cloak
Elevar, angel of Volune 	Lux 	Litigious Partition expert, accompanied by a bloodhound and a spider
=== Important Non-Player Characters ===
Character	Description
The Guest	Mysterious eldritch being embodying the spirit of hospitality
== Summary ==
The party arrives at The Afterparty. There are large tents with music and revelry, yet without Falamar present everything appears drab and lifeless, with brown grass and a bleak gray sky. Time has extended endlessly here, with the partygoers feeling themselves to have been here for days, centuries, or longer.
Velos goes to investigate a maypole that people are dancing around. Some of the dancers have been in repetitive motion for so long that their muscles have stiffened and locked in place. Other partygoers have moss growing on their skin.
Elevar's bloodhound leads them to a nearby tent that turns out to be a larder. In addition to food, there are dead bodies being kept inside. Some of the bodies were poisoned, others appear to have starved to death. Elevar is scandalized by the rules violation of keeping corpses in a place meant for food, and wants to move the bodies out of the tent. Gryling disagrees, arguing that dead bodies can also be food. He demonstrates this by sticking his finger into one of the corpses, then licking the gore off. Elevar is furious and hits Gryling with their club.
Velos tries to start a conversation with an extremely stationary-looking man near the maypole. In doing so, they unintentionally interrupt the man's slow and steady breathing, which in turn interrupts the rhythm of the music and causes the dancers to falter.
Galtha, seeing the dead bodies in the larder, attempts to use their foresight to learn who else from among the partygoers is going to die. They see two doomed faces, one belonging to a maypole dancer and the other to a musician playing the oboe. When Velos inadvertently interrupts the music, the musician hands his oboe off to another partygoer and Galtha moves in to try to strike up a conversation. They tell the musician some esoteric oboe facts, such as that the oboe was originally invented at the court of the dead god Quen Yohng, who was slain by Volune for his crimes. The musician is unamused, and tells Galtha that he has been playing that hated oboe since time immemorial.
Elevar begins moving dead bodies out of the larder, which sparks a debate between them and the partygoers. Gryling feels a hand on his shoulder, and someone whispers something to him. The hand had four unnaturally long and jointed fingers and no thumb. Gryling realizes that the hand belonged to The Guest.
Gryling tells the other three party members about The Guest and its four-fingered hand. Elevar is now traumatized and has a phobia of hands. Velos, hearing Gryling's description, suddenly recalls a forgotten encounter with The Guest from long ago. The Guest had attempted to convince Velos that the two of them were alike, both of them having no real purpose or place in the universe, since Velos is an unsatisfactory and ill-favoured offshoot of Shantara.
Elevar wants a sample of the poison that was used to kill the bodies in the larder. They cut into the bodies and let the blood drain out onto the ground. The ground hungrily swallows up the blood, but the poison is left behind on the surface. Rather than being deathly and evil, the poison is instead reminiscent of a gentle twilight, the sweet release from a compulsory life. This is apparently because normally none of the people here at The Afterparty are able to die. Lux gives some of the poison to their bloodhound. The bloodhound dies. Gryling tries drinking the poison and manages to survive.
Elevar tries draining blood from the dead bodies that look like they starved to death, to see if they were also poisoned. As it turns out, the starved bodies are not actually dead, and Elevar cutting into them has woken them from their resigned stupor. This again sparks a debate between Elevar and the partygoers, with the partygoers arguing that the bodies in the larder should be allowed to lie there in peace rather than being woken up and forced to live, and Elevar arguing that the rules of The Afterparty are that the people here aren't supposed to die.
Velos notices that the dancers at the maypole are now dancing in the opposite direction. Gryling and Galtha also return to the maypole, and Galtha joins the dancers but moves in the reverse direction.
The Guest leads Elevar to a different tent. Elevar doesn't recognize what is happening, or has had their will broken by The Guest in some way, and is on the verge of drinking poison at The Guest's behest.
Galtha uses their metagaming powers to know that Elevar is in danger, and they, Gryling, and Velos rush to the tent. Gryling tears open the tent flap with so much force that it causes the entire tent to collapse. As it's collapsing, Galtha loudly accuses The Guest of being uninvited, and Velos sneaks up and stabs it. However, it turns out that The Guest was wearing Elevar's face and so Velos has actually stabbed Elevar instead.
The Guest attempts to drag Elevar down into the earth. Gryling attempts to make use of The Guest's mirroring properties and smashes his own hand with a rock, hoping to have it turn out to be The Guest's hand that was smashed. This almost works, but ultimately it is in fact actually Gryling's own hand that he has smashed with a rock.
Galtha, deciding that reflections are important to this conflict, rushes over to a tub of brine that the partygoers use for washing themselves. Gazing into their reflection in the water, Galtha sees that The Guest is also there in the reflection. The Guest tells Galtha about how it is perpetually wandering, never being welcomed anywhere. Galtha asks The Guest if it has ever gone bicycling. The Guest replies that it used to own an orange bicycle. Galtha reflexively holds up their magic shield to block the concept of an orange bicycle from their understanding and thus protect themself from madness.
Meanwhile, Elevar comes up to the tub of brine intending to stab Galtha in order to injure The Guest. The moment that they stab, however, is the same moment that Galtha raises their shield, and thus the stab is blocked. The Guest then pulls Elevar into the reflection in the brine. As Elevar thrashes around, Gryling pulls Galtha to safety away from the tub. Elevar then manages to extricate themself from the brine reflection as well.
Elevar, Galtha, and Gryling all fail a will check, and they now each perceive that one of the other two of them is The Guest, but they can never quite be sure which. The Guest says that its true name is "Hospitality", and that it is a sort of platonic embodiment of the welcome that is extended to an uninvited guest. With the courts of the gods now locked down and regulated in the aftermath of the Partition, there isn't any place for it in the universe anymore and its existence has become tenuous. The Guest invites the party members to become like it, wandering forever and leaving behind the rigidity of the Partition.
Elevar attempts a legalistic argument with The Guest about its reflective properties and about the nature of the Partition. The Guest, however, shows Elevar that they are a hypocrite, since they themself have violated the Partition in order to hunt down The Guest for the crime of violating the partition. Gryling, having drank poison earlier, has now become fully possessed and suffers a sort of ego death.
Galtha attempts to use their foresight to convey the strength of the Partition and to show the fact that there is no place for The Guest anywhere in the future. Elevar uses their knowledge of rules and of the Partition to back up this line of argument. Also Galtha punches The Guest in the kidney. Additionally, Velos explains to The Guest how their situation with regard to Shantara is not in fact the same as The Guest's situation.
The Guest is vanquished by the party's logic. It is now banished from this timeline and flees to beyond the Horizon. The party's mission is successful. Despite this, Elevar decides that they cannot live with their hypocrisy and so they choose to drink the poison and die. They bequeath their lawbook to Galtha and their spider companion to Velos.
The two remaining party members return to their deities. Adalna is pleased with Galtha's performance, and Galtha returns to being a scholarly angel of esoteric knowledge. Shantara, on the other hand, is disappointed in Velos' weakness and unimportance, telling them that they are "auxiliary". However, Velos comes to the realization that their true value stems directly from their feeling of inadequacy in the eyes of Shantara, and that if they ever did feel themself to be enough, it truly would make them worthless. Velos then opts to spend the rest of their existence pursuing The Guest out to the Horizon.
Category:One-Shot Summaries